From b46274e93e02f573aae63c317e50b35641b1d41b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: xianhu Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2017 11:02:49 +0800 Subject: [PATCH] add python_markov_chain.py --- .gitignore | 1 - README.md | 2 + Text/Obama.txt | 455 ++ Text/Walden.txt | 875 +++ Text/Zarathustra.txt | 13149 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ python_markov_chain.py | 34 + 6 files changed, 14515 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) create mode 100644 Text/Obama.txt create mode 100644 Text/Walden.txt create mode 100644 Text/Zarathustra.txt create mode 100644 python_markov_chain.py diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore index 4bc14b2..7d49c69 100644 --- a/.gitignore +++ b/.gitignore @@ -5,7 +5,6 @@ *.log *.out *.dat -*.txt *.temp *.png .* diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 5e20f09..e801eee 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -45,6 +45,8 @@ ### python_flask.py: Flask相关说明 ### MyShow: 玩点好玩的--知乎全部话题关系可视化 + +### python_markov_chain.py: 玩点好玩的--使用马尔可夫模型自动生成文章 =================================================================================================== ### 您可以fork该项目, 并在修改后提交Pull request diff --git a/Text/Obama.txt b/Text/Obama.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e5c0c54 --- /dev/null +++ b/Text/Obama.txt @@ -0,0 +1,455 @@ +Thank you, Iowa. + +You know, they said -- they said -- they said this day would never come. + +They said our sights were set too high. + +They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. + +But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do. + +You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days. + +You have done what America can do in this new year, 2008. + +In lines that stretched around schools and churches, in small towns and in big cities, you came together as Democrats, Republicans, and independents, to stand up and say that we are one nation. We are one people. And our time for change has come. + +You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington; to end the political strategy that's been all about division, and instead make it about addition; to build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states; because that's how we'll win in November, and that's how we'll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation. + +We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America. + +You said the time has come to tell the lobbyists who think their money and their influence speak louder than our voices that they don't own this government -- we do. And we are here to take it back. + +The time has come for a President who will be honest about the choices and the challenges we face, who will listen to you and learn from you, even when we disagree, who won't just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know. + +And in New Hampshire, if you give me the same chance that Iowa did tonight, I will be that President for America. + +I'll be a President who finally makes health care affordable and available to every single American, the same way I expanded health care in Illinois, by -- by bringing Democrats and Republicans together to get the job done. + +I'll be a President who ends the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and put a middle-class tax cut into the pockets of working Americans who deserve it. + +I'll be a President who harnesses the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all. + +And I'll be a President who ends this war in Iraq and finally brings our troops home, who restores our moral standing, who understands that 9/11 is not a way to scare up votes but a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century -- common threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease. + +Tonight, we are one step closer to that vision of America because of what you did here in Iowa. And so I'd especially like to thank the organizers and the precinct captains, the volunteers and the staff who made this all possible. + +And while I'm at it on thank you's, I think it makes sense for me to thank the love of my life, the rock of the Obama family, the closer on the campaign trail: Give it up for Michelle Obama. + +I know you didn't do this for me. You did this -- You did this because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas -- that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it. + +I know this. I know this because while I may be standing here tonight, I'll never forget that my journey began on the streets of Chicago doing what so many of you have done for this campaign and all the campaigns here in Iowa: organizing and working and fighting to make people's lives just a little bit better. + +I know how hard it is. It comes with little sleep, little pay, and a lot of sacrifice. There are days of disappointment. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this: a night -- a night that, years from now, when we've made the changes we believe in, when more families can afford to see a doctor, when our children -- when Malia and Sasha and your children inherit a planet that's a little cleaner and safer, when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united, you'll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began. + +This was the moment when the improbable beat what Washington always said was inevitable. + +This was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long; when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause; when we finally gave Americans who had never participated in politics a reason to stand up and to do so. + +This was the moment when we finally beat back the poli[tics] of fear and doubt and cynicism, the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up. This was the moment. + +Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope. For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. + +It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it. + +Hope is what I saw in the eyes of the young woman in Cedar Rapids who works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill -- a young woman who still believes that this country will give her the chance to live out her dreams. + +Hope is what I heard in the voice of the New Hampshire woman who told me that she hasn't been able to breathe since her nephew left for Iraq -- who still goes to bed each night praying for his safe return. + +Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire, what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation, what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. + +Hope -- Hope is what led me here today. With a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas, and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. + +Hope is the bedrock of this nation -- the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be. + +That is what we started here in Iowa and that is the message we can now carry to New Hampshire and beyond; the same message we had when we were up and when we were down; the one that can save this country, brick by brick, block by block, calloused hand by calloused hand; that together, ordinary people can do extraordinary things. + +Because we are not a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States of America. And in this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again. + +Thank you, Iowa. + +Thank you, thank you. + +My fellow citizens: + +I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you've bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition. + +Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential Oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the Oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebearers [sic], and true to our founding documents. + +So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans. + +That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet. + +These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land -- a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights. + +Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met. + +On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. + +On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. + +We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to "set aside childish things."2 The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. + +In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom. + +For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. + +For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. + +For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. + +Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction. + +This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. + +For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act -- not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. + +All this we can do. + +All this we will do. + +Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions -- who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. + +What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government. + +Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good. + +As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers -- Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience'[s] sake. And so to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity. And we are ready to lead once more. + +Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. + +We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort -- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you! + +For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace. + +To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West -- know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those -- To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. + +To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it. + +As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are the guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment -- a moment that will define a generation -- it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all. + +For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate. + +Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. + +This is the price and the promise of citizenship. + +This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. + +This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed -- why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred Oath. + +So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The Capitol was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: + +Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]. + +America: In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations. + +Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. + +Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: + +Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union. For two hundred and twenty years, our leaders [have] fulfilled this duty. They've done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility. And they've done so in the midst of war and depression -- at moments of great strife and great struggle. + +It's tempting to look back on these moments and assume that our progress was inevitable -- that America was always destined to succeed. But when the Union was turned back at Bull Run and the Allies first landed at Omaha Beach, victory was very much in doubt. When the market crashed on Black Tuesday and civil rights marchers were beaten on Bloody Sunday, the future was anything but certain. These were the times that tested the courage of our convictions, and the strength of our union. And despite all our divisions and disagreements, our hesitations and our fears, America prevailed because we chose to move forward as one nation, and one people. + +Again, we are tested. And again, we must answer history's call. + +One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted -- immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed. + +But the devastation remains. One in ten Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. And for those who had already known poverty, life's become that much harder. + +And this recession has also compounded the burdens that America's families have been dealing with for decades: the burden of working harder and longer for less, of being unable to save enough to retire, or help kids with college. + +So I know the anxieties that are out there right now. They're not new. These struggles are the reason I ran for President. These struggles are what I've witnessed for years in places like Elkhart, Indiana; Galesburg, Illinois. I hear about them in the letters that I read each night. The toughest to read are those written by children, asking why they have to move from their home, asking or when their mom or dad will be able to go back to work. + +For these Americans and so many others, change has not come fast enough. Some are frustrated; some are angry. They don't understand why it seems like bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded but hard work on Main Street isn't; or why Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems. They're tired of the partisanship and the shouting and the pettiness. They know we can't afford it. Not now. + +So we face big and difficult challenges. And what the American people hope -- what they deserve -- is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to work through our differences; to overcome the numbing weight of our politics. For while the people who sent us here have different backgrounds, different stories, different beliefs, the anxieties they face are the same. The aspirations they hold are shared: a job that pays the bills; a chance to get ahead. Most of all, the ability to give their children a better life. + +And you know what else they share? They share a stubborn resilience in the face of adversity. After one of the most difficult years in our history, they remain busy building cars and teaching kids, starting businesses, and going back to school. They're coaching little league and helping their neighbors. One woman wrote to me and said, "We are strained but hopeful, struggling but encouraged." + +It's because of this spirit -- this great decency and great strength -- that I have never been more hopeful about America's future than I am tonight. + +Despite -- Despite our hardships, our union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit. We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit. In this new decade, it's time the American people get a government that matches their decency, that embodies their strength. And tonight -- tonight I'd like to talk about how, together, we can deliver on that promise. + +It begins with our economy. Our most urgent -- Our most urgent task upon taking office was to shore up the same banks that helped cause this crisis. It was not easy to do. And if there's one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans -- and everybody in between -- it's that we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it -- I hated it -- I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal. + +But when I ran for President, I promised I wouldn't just do what was popular -- I would do what was necessary. And if we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today. More businesses would certainly have closed. More homes would have surely been lost. So I supported the last Administration's efforts to create the financial rescue program. And when we took the program over, we made it more transparent and more accountable. And as a result, the markets are now stabilized, and we've recovered most of the money we spent on the banks. + +Most, but not all. To recover the rest, I've proposed a fee on the biggest banks. + +Now -- Now, I know Wall Street isn't keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need. + +Now, as we stabilized the financial system, we also took steps to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who had become unemployed. That's why we extended or increased unemployment benefits for more than 18 million Americans, made health insurance 65% cheaper for families who get their coverage through COBRA, and passed 25 different tax cuts. + +Now, let me repeat: We cut taxes. + +We cut taxes for 95% of working families. + +We cut taxes for small businesses. + +We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. + +We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. + +We cut taxes for eight million Americans paying for college. + + (I thought I'd get some applause on that one.) + +As a result -- As a result, millions of Americans had more to spend on gas, and food, and other necessities -- all of which helped businesses keep more workers. And we haven't raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime. + +Now, because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. 200,000 work in construction and clean energy. 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, first responders. And we're on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year. + +The plan that has made all of this possible, from the tax cuts to the jobs, is the Recovery Act. That's right: the Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus Bill. Economists on the left and the right say this bill has helped saved jobs and avert disaster. But you don't have to take their word for it: Talk to the small business in Phoenix that will triple its workforce because of the Recovery Act. Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created. Talk to the single teacher raising two kids who was told by her principal in the last week of school that because of the Recovery Act, she wouldn't be laid off after all. + +There are stories like this all across America. And after two years of recession, the economy is growing again. Retirement funds have started to gain back some of their value. Businesses are beginning to invest again, and slowly [some] are starting to hire again. + +But I realize that for every success story, there are other stories -- of men and women who wake up with the anguish of not knowing where their next paycheck will come from; who send out resumes week after week and hear nothing in response. That is why jobs must be our number one focus in 2010. And that's why I'm calling for a new jobs bill tonight! + +Now, the true engine of job creation in this country will always be America's businesses. (I agree. Absolutely). But government can create the conditions necessary for businesses to expand and hire more workers. We should start where most new jobs do -- in small businesses, companies that begin when -- companies that begin when an entrepreneur -- when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, or a worker decides its time she became her own boss. + +Through sheer grit and determination, these companies have weathered the recession and they're ready to grow. But when you talk to small business owners in places like Allentown, Pennsylvania or Elyria, Ohio, you find out that even though banks on Wall Street are lending again, they're mostly lending to bigger companies. Financing remains difficult for small business owners across the country -- even those that are making a profit. + +So tonight, I'm proposing that we take 30 billion dollars of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. I'm also proposing a new small business tax credit -- one that will go to over one million small businesses who hire new workers or raise wages. While we're at it, let's also eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment, and provide a tax incentive for all large businesses and all small businesses to invest in new plants and equipment. + +Next, we can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow. From -- From the first railroads to the interstate highway system, our nation has always been built to compete. There's no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products. + +Tomorrow, I'll visit Tampa, Florida, where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad funded by the Recovery Act. There are projects like that all across this country that will create jobs and help our move our nation's goods, services, and information. We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities, and give -- and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy efficient, which supports clean energy jobs. And to encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America. + +Now, the House has passed a jobs bill that includes some of these steps. As the first order of business this year, I urge the Senate to do the same -- and I know they will. They will. People are out of work. They're hurting. And they need our help. And I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay. + +But -- But the truth is, these steps still won't make up for the seven million jobs that we've lost over the last two years. The only way to move to full employment is to lay a new foundation for long-term economic growth, and finally address the problems that America's families have confronted for years. + +We can't afford another so-called economic "expansion" like the one from the last decade -- what some call the "lost decade" -- where jobs grew more slowly than during any prior expansion; where the income of the average American household declined while the cost of health care and tuition reached record highs; where prosperity was built on a housing bubble and financial speculation. + +From the day I took office, I've been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious. Such an effort would be too contentious. I've been told that our political system is too gridlocked, and that we should just put things on hold for awhile. For those who make these claims, I have one simple question: How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold? + +You see -- You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China's not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany's not waiting. India's not waiting. These nations are -- they're not standing still. These nations aren't playing for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math and science. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. + +Well, I do not accept second-place for the United States of America. + +As hard as it may be, as uncomfortable and contentious as the debates may become, it's time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth. Now, one place to start is serious financial reform. Look, I am not interested in punishing banks. I'm interested in protecting our economy. A strong, healthy financial market makes it possible for businesses to access credit and create new jobs. It channels the savings of families into investments that raise incomes. But that can only happen if we guard against the same recklessness that nearly brought down our entire economy. + +We need to make sure consumers and middle-class families have the information they need to make financial decisions. We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. Now, the House has already passed financial reform with many of these changes. And -- And the lobbyists are trying to kill it. Well, we cannot let them win this fight. And if the bill that ends up on my desk does not meet the test of real reform, I will send it back until we get it right. We've got to get it right. + +Next, we need to encourage American innovation. Last year, we made the largest investment in basic research funding in history, an investment -- an investment that could lead to the world's cheapest solar cells or treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched. And no area is more ripe for such innovation than energy. You can see the results of last year's investment in clean energy in the North Carolina company that will create 1200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries, or, in the California business that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels. + +But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America. + +I am grateful to the House for passing such a bill last year. And this year -- this year, I am eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate. I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy. I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But -- But -- Here -- Here's the thing: Even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation. + +Third, we need to export more of our goods -- because the more products we make and sell to other countries, the more jobs we support right here in America. So -- So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support two million jobs in America. To help meet this goal, we're launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security. + +We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are. If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules. And that's why we'll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia. + +Fourth, we need to invest in the skills and education of our people. + +Now, this year -- this year we've broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools. And the idea here is simple: instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform -- reform that raises student achievement, inspires students to excel in math and science, and turns around failing schools that steal the future of too many young Americans, from rural communities to the inner city. In the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education. And in this country, the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential. + +When we renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we will work with Congress to expand these reforms to all 50 states. Still, in this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job. That's why I urge the Senate to follow the House and pass a bill that will revitalize our community colleges, which are a career pathway to the children of so many working families. + +To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans. Instead, let's take that money and give families a 10,000 dollar tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants. And let's tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years -- and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college. + +And by the way, it's time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs -- because they, too, have a responsibility to help solve this problem. + +Now, the price of college tuition is just one of the burdens facing the middle-class. That's why last year I asked Vice President Biden to chair a task force on Middle-Class Families. That's why we're nearly doubling the child care tax credit, and making it easier to save for retirement by giving access to every worker a retirement account and expanding the tax credit for those who start a nest egg. That's why we're working to lift the value of a family's single largest investment -- their home. The steps we took last year to shore up the housing market have allowed millions of Americans to take out new loans and save an average of 1500 dollars on mortgage payments. This year, we will step up re-financing so that homeowners can move into more affordable mortgages. And -- And it is precisely to relieve the burden on middle-class families that we still need health insurance reform. Yes, we do. + +Now, let's clear a few things up. I didn't choose to tackle this issue to get some legislative victory under my belt. And by now it should be fairly obvious that I didn't take on health care because it was good politics. I took on health care because [of] the stories I've heard from Americans with preexisting conditions whose lives depend on getting coverage; patients who've been denied coverage; families -- even those with insurance -- who are just one illness away from financial ruin. + +After nearly a century of trying -- Democratic Administrations, Republican Administrations -- we are closer than ever to bringing more security to the lives of so many Americans. The approach we've taken would protect every American from the worst practices of the insurance industry. It would give small businesses and uninsured Americans a chance to choose an affordable health care plan in a competitive market. It would require every insurance plan to cover preventive care. And by the way, I want to acknowledge our First Lady, Michelle Obama, who this year is creating a national movement to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity and make kids healthier. Thank you. She gets embarrassed. + +Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan. It would reduce costs and premiums for millions of families and businesses. And according to the Congressional Budget Office -- the independent organization that both parties have cited as the official scorekeeper for Congress -- our approach would bring down the deficit by as much as one trillion dollars over the next two decades. + +Still, this is a complexed issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, the process left most Americans wondering, "What's in it for me?" But I also know this problem is not going away. By the time I'm finished speaking tonight, more Americans will have lost their health insurance. Millions will lose it this year. Our deficit will grow. Premiums will go up. Patients will be denied the care they need. Small business owners will continue to drop coverage altogether. I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the people in this chamber. + +So, as temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we've proposed. There's a reason why many doctors, nurses, and health care experts who know our system best consider this approach a vast improvement over the status quo. But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. Let me know. I'm eager to see it. + +Here's what I ask Congress, though: Don't walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close. Let us find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people. Let's get it done. Let's get it done. + +Now, even as health care reform would reduce our deficit, it's not enough to dig us out of a massive fiscal hole in which we find ourselves. It's a challenge that makes all others that much harder to solve, and one that's been subject to a lot of political posturing. So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight. + +At the beginning of the last decade, the year 2000, America had a budget surplus of over 200 billion dollars. By -- By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over one trillion dollars and projected deficits of eight trillion dollars over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a three trillion dollar hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door. + +Now -- Now -- just stating the facts. Now, if we had taken office in ordinary times, I would have liked nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit. But we took office amid a crisis. And our efforts to prevent a second depression have added another one trillion dollars to our national debt. That, too, is a fact. + +I'm absolutely convinced that was the right thing to do. But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same. So tonight, I'm proposing specific steps to pay for the trillion dollars that it took to rescue the economy last year. Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't. And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will. + +We will continue to go through the budget, line by line, page by page, to eliminate programs that we can't afford and don't work. We've already identified 20 billion dollars in savings for next year. To help working families, we'll extend our middle-class tax cuts. But at a time of record deficits, we will not continue tax cuts for oil companies, for investment fund managers, and for those making over 250,000 dollars a year. We just can't afford it. + +Now, even after paying for what we spent on my watch, we'll still face the massive deficit we had when I took office. More importantly, the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will continue to skyrocket. That's why I've called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can't be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. + +Now, yesterday the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I'll issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans. And when the vote comes tomorrow, the Senate should restore the pay-as-you-go law that was a big reason for why we had record surpluses in the 1990s. + +Now, I know that some in my own party will argue that we can't address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting. And I agree -- which is why this freeze won't take effect until next year -- when the economy is stronger. That's how budgeting works. But understand -- understand if we don't take meaningful steps to rein in our debt, it could damage our markets, increase the cost of borrowing, and jeopardize our recovery -- all of which would have an even worse effect on our job growth and family incomes. + +From some on the right, I expect we'll hear a different argument -- that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away. The problem is that's what we did for eight years. That's what helped us into this crisis. It's what helped lead to these deficits. We can't do it again. + +Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it's time to try something new. Let's invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let's meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let's try common sense -- a novel concept. + +Now, to do that we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust -- deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve. + +Now, that's what I came to Washington to do. That's why, for the first time in history, my Administration posts on our White House visitors online. That's why we've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs, or seats on federal boards and commissions. But we can't stop there. It's time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my Administration or with Congress. It's time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. + +With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests -- or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems. + +I'm also calling on Congress to continue down the path of earmark reform -- Democrats and Republicans, Democrats and Republicans. Look...you've trimmed some of this spending; you've embraced some meaningful change. But restoring the public trust demands more. For example, some members of Congress post some earmark requests online. Tonight, I'm calling on Congress to publish all earmark requests on a single Web site before there's a vote, so that the American people can see how their money is being spent. + +Of course, none of these reforms will even happen if we don't also reform how we work with one another. Now, I'm not naïve. I never thought that the mere fact of my election would usher in peace and harmony, and some post-partisan era. I knew that both parties have fed divisions that are deeply entrenched. And on some issues, there are simply philosophical differences that will always cause us to part ways. These disagreements, about the role of government in our lives, about our national priorities and our national security, they've been taking place for over 200 years. They're the very essence of our democracy. + +But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is "Election Day." We can't wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side -- a belief that if you lose, I win.1 Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can. The confirmation of -- I'm speaking to both parties now -- the confirmation of well-qualified public servants shouldn't be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual senators. + +Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, no matter how malicious, is just part of the game. But it's precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet -- Worse yet, it's sowing further division among our citizens, further distrust in our government. + +So, no, I will not give up on trying to change the tone of our politics. I know it's an election year. And after last week, it's clear that campaign fever has come even earlier than usual. But we still need to govern. + +To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that -- that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town -- a supermajority -- then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions. So let's show the American people that we can do it together. + +This week -- This week, I'll be meet -- addressing a meeting of the House Republicans. I'd like to begin monthly meetings with both Democratic and Republican leadership. I know you can't wait. + +Now, throughout our history, no issue has united this country more than our security. Sadly, some of the unity we felt after 9/11 has dissipated. Now, we can argue all we want about who's to blame for this, but I'm not interested in re-litigating the past. I know that all of us love this country. All of us are committed to its defense. So let's put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough. Let's reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values. Let's leave behind the fear and division, and do what it takes to defend our nation and forge a more hopeful future -- for America and for the world. + +That's the work we began last year. Since the day I took office, we've renewed our focus on the terrorists who threaten our nation. We've made substantial investments in our homeland security and disrupted plots that threatened to take American lives. We are filling unacceptable gaps revealed by the failed Christmas attack, with better airline security and swifter action on our intelligence. We've prohibited torture and strengthened partnerships from the Pacific to South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula. And in the last year, hundreds of al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed -- far more than in 2008. + +And in Afghanistan, we're increasing our troops and training Afghan security forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home. We will reward good governance, work to reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans -- men and women alike. We're joined by allies and partners who have increased their own commitments, and who will come together tomorrow in London to reaffirm our common purpose. There will be difficult days ahead. But I am absolutely confident we will succeed. + +As we take the fight to al Qaeda, we are responsibly leaving Iraq to its people. As a candidate, I promised that I would end this war, and that is what I am doing as President. We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August. We will support -- We will support the Iraqi government -- We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and we will continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity. But make no mistake: This war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home. + +Tonight, all of our men and women in uniform -- in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and around the world -- they have to know that we -- that...they have our respect, our gratitude, our full support. And just as they must have the resources they need in war, we all have a responsibility to support them when they come home. That's why we made the largest increase in investments for veterans in decades last year. That's why we're building a 21st century VA. And that's why Michelle has joined with Jill Biden to forge a national commitment to support military families. + +Now, even as we prosecute two wars, we're also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people -- the threat of nuclear weapons. I've embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons and seeks a world without them. To reduce our stockpiles and launchers, while ensuring our deterrent, the United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reachings arms control treaty in nearly two decades. And at April's Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring 44 nations together here in Washington, D.C. behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists. + +Now, these diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of nuclear weapons. That's why North Korea now faces increased isolation and stronger sanctions -- sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That's why the international community is more united and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran's leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise. + +That's the leadership that we are providing -- engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We're working through the G20 to sustain a lasting global recovery. We're working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science and education and innovation. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We're helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS. And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bioterrorism or an infectious disease -- a plan that will counter threats at home and strengthen public health abroad. + +As we have for over 60 years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores. But we also do it because it is right. That's why, as we meet here tonight, over 10,000 Americans are working with many nations to help the people of Haiti recover and rebuild. That's why we stand with the girl who yearns to go to school in Afghanistan; why we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran; why we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea. For America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity. Always. + +Abroad, America's greatest source of strength has always been our ideals. The same is true at home. We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we're all created equal; that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it; if you adhere to our common values you should be treated no different than anyone else. + +We must continually renew this promise. My Administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination. We finally strengthened -- We finally strengthened our laws to protect against crimes driven by hate. This year -- This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It's the right thing to do. + +We're going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws so that women get equal pay for an equal day's work. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system -- to secure our borders and enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nations. + +In the end, it's our ideals, our values that built America -- values that allowed us to forge a nation made up of immigrants from every corner of the globe; values that drive our citizens still. Every day, Americans meet their responsibilities to their families and their employers. Time and again, they lend a hand to their neighbors and give back to their country. They take pride in their labor, and are generous in spirit. These aren't Republican values or Democratic values that they're living by; business values or labor values. They're American values. + +Unfortunately, too many of our citizens have lost faith that our biggest institutions -- our corporations, our media, and, yes, our government -- still reflect these same values. Each of these institutions are full of honorable men and women doing important work that helps our country prosper. But each time a CEO rewards himself for failure, or a banker puts the rest of us at risk for his own selfish gain, people's doubts grow. Each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith. The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates to silly arguments, big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away. + +No wonder there's so much cynicism out there. No wonder there's so much disappointment. + +I campaigned on the promise of change -- "Change we can believe in" -- the slogan went. And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren't sure if they still believe we can change -- or that I can deliver it. But remember this -- I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I could do it alone. Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That's just how it is. + +Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths and pointing fingers. We can do what's necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what's best for the next generation. + +But I also know this: If people had made that decision 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, we wouldn't be here tonight. The only reason we are here is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain; to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and their grandchildren. + +Our Administration has had some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved. But I wake up every day knowing that they are nothing compared to the setbacks that families all across this country have faced this year. And what keeps me going, what keeps me fighting, is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism, that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people -- that lives on. + +It lives on in the struggling small business owner who wrote to me of his company: "None of us," he said, "…are willing to consider, even slightly, that we might fail." + +It lives on in the woman who said that even though she and her neighbors have felt the pain of recession, "We are strong. We are resilient. We are American." + +It lives on in the 8-year-old boy in Louisiana, who just sent me his allowance and asked if I would give it to the people of Haiti. + +And it lives on in all the Americans who've dropped everything to go someplace they've never been and pull people they've never known from the rubble, prompting chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A!" when another life was saved. + +The spirit that has sustained this nation for more than two centuries lives on in you, its people. + +We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment -- to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more. + +Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. + +Thank you. Thank you, everybody. How do you like my new entrance music? Rush Limbaugh warned you about this -- second term, baby. We’re changing things around here a little bit. + +Actually, my advisors were a little worried about the new rap entrance music. They are a little more traditional. They suggested that I should start with some jokes at my own expense, just take myself down a peg. I was like, guys, after four and a half years, how many pegs are there left? + +I want to thank the White House Correspondents. Ed, you’re doing an outstanding job. We are grateful for -- the great work you’ve done. To all the dignitaries who are here, everybody on the dais -- I especially want to say thank you to [General] Ray Odierno, who does outstanding service on behalf of our country, and all our men and women in uniform every single day. + +And of course, our extraordinary First Lady, Michelle Obama. Everybody loves Michelle. She’s on the cover of Vogue, high poll numbers. But don’t worry -- I recently got my own magazine cover. + +Now, look, I get it. These days, I look in the mirror and I have to admit, I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist that I used to be. Time passes. You get a little gray. + +And yet, even after all this time, I still make rookie mistakes. Like, I’m out in California, we’re at a fundraiser; we’re having a nice time. I happen to mention that Kamala Harris is the best-looking attorney general in the country. As you might imagine, I got trouble when I got back home. Who knew Eric Holder was so sensitive? + +And then there’s the Easter Egg Roll, which is supposed to be just a nice, fun event with the kids. I go out on the basketball court, took 22 shots -- made two of them. That’s right: two hits, 20 misses. The executives at NBC asked, “What’s your secret?” + +So, yes, maybe I have lost a step. But some things are beyond my control. For example, this whole controversy about Jaz-Z going to Cuba -- it’s unbelievable. I’ve got 99 problems and now Jay-Z is one. That’s another rap reference, Bill. I’ll let you know. + +Of course, everybody has got plenty of advice. Maureen Dowd said I could solve all my problems if I were just more like Michael Douglas in “The American President.” And I know Michael is here tonight. Michael, what’s your secret, man? Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy? Might that have something to do with it? I don’t know. Check in with me. Maybe it’s something else. + + + +Anyway, I recognize that this job can take a toll on you. I understand -- second term, you need a burst of new energy, try some new things. And my team and I talked about it. We were willing to try anything. So we borrowed one of Michelle’s tricks. I thought this looked pretty good, but no bounce. + +I want to give a shout-out to our headliner, Conan O’Brien. I was just talking to Ed, and I understand that when the Correspondents’ Association was considering Conan for this gig, they were faced with that age-old dilemma: Do you offer it to him now, or wait for five years and then give it to Jimmy Fallon? That was a little harsh. I love Conan. + +And of course, the White House press corps is here. I know CNN has taken some knocks lately, but the fact is I admire their commitment to cover all sides of a story, just in case one of them happens to be accurate. + +Some of my former advisors have switched over to the dark side. For example, David Axelrod now works for MSNBC, which is a nice change of pace since MSNBC used to work for David Axelrod. + + + +The History Channel is not here. I guess they were embarrassed about the whole Obama-is-a-devil thing. Of course, that never kept Fox News from showing up. They actually thought the comparison was not fair -- to Satan. + +But the problem is, is that the media landscape is changing so rapidly. You can’t keep up with it. I mean, I remember when BuzzFeed was just something I did in college around 2:00 a.m. It’s true. + +Recently, though, I found a new favorite source for political news -- these guys are great. I think everybody here should check it out, they tell it like it is. It’s called WhiteHouse.gov. I cannot get enough of it. + +The fact is I really do respect the press. I recognize that the press and I have different jobs to do. My job is to be President; your job is to keep me humble. Frankly, I think I’m doing my job better. + +But part of the problem is everybody is so cynical. I mean, we’re constantly feeding cynicism, suspicion, conspiracies. You remember a few months ago, my Administration put out a photograph of me going skeet shooting at Camp David? + + + +You remember that? And quite a number of people insisted that this had been photoshopped. But tonight I have something to confess: You were right. Guys, can we show them the actual photo? + + + +We were just trying to tone it down a little bit. That was an awesome day. + +There are other new players in the media landscape as well, like super PACs. Did you know that Sheldon Adelson spent 100 million dollars of his own money last year on negative ads? You’ve got to really dislike me -- to spend that kind of money. I mean, that’s Oprah money. You could buy an island and call it “Nobama” for that kind of money. Sheldon would have been better off offering me 100 million dollar to drop out of the race. I probably wouldn’t have taken it, but I'd have thought about it. Michelle would have taken it. You think I’m joking? + +I know Republicans are still sorting out what happened in 2012, but one thing they all agree on is they need to do a better job reaching out to minorities. And look, call me self-centered, but I can think of one minority they could start with. Hello? Think of me as a trial run, you know? See how it goes. + +If they won’t come to me, I will come to them. Recently, I had dinner -- it’s been well publicized -- I had dinner with a number of the Republican senators. And I’ll admit it wasn’t easy. I proposed a toast -- it died in committee. + +Of course, even after I've done all this, some folks still don’t think I spend enough time with Congress. "Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?" they ask. Really? Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell? I'm sorry. I get frustrated sometimes. + +I am not giving up. In fact, I'm taking my charm offensive on the road -- a Texas barbeque with Ted Cruz, a Kentucky bluegrass concert with Rand Paul, and a book-burning with Michele Bachmann. + +My charm offensive has helped me learn some interesting things about what's going on in Congress -- it turns out, absolutely nothing. But the point of my charm offensive is simple: We need to make progress on some important issues. Take the sequester. Republicans fell in love with this thing, and now they can't stop talking about how much they hate it. It's like we're trapped in a Taylor Swift album. + +One senator who has reached across the aisle recently is Marco Rubio, but I don’t know about 2016. I mean, the guy has not even finished a single term in the Senate and he thinks he's ready to be President. Kids these days. + +I, on the other hand, have run my last campaign. On Thursday, as Ed mentioned, I went to the opening of the Bush Presidential Library in Dallas. It was a wonderful event, and that inspired me to get started on my own legacy, which will actually begin by building another edifice right next to the Bush Library -- can we show that, please? + + + +I'm also hard at work on plans for the Obama Library. And some have suggested that we put it in my birthplace, but I'd rather keep it in the United States. Did anybody not see that joke coming? Show of hands. Only Gallup? Maybe Dick Morris? + +Now, speaking of presidents and their legacies, I want to acknowledge a wonderful friend, Steven Spielberg, and Daniel Day-Lewis, who are here tonight. We had a screening of their most recent film, Lincoln, which was an extraordinary film. I am a little nervous, though, about Steven's next project. I saw a behind-the-scenes look on HBO -- well, let's just check it out. Roll the tape. + +It's a remarkable transformation. Do I really sound like that, though, honey? + +Groucho Marx once said -- and, Senator Cruz, that’s Groucho Marx, not Karl. That’s the other guy. Groucho Marx once told an audience, "Before I speak, I have something important to say." And along those same lines, I want to close on a more serious note. + +Obviously, there has been no shortage of news to cover over these past few weeks. And these have been some very hard days for too many of our citizens. Even as we gather here tonight, our thoughts are not far from the people of Boston and the people of West, Texas. There are families in the Midwest who are coping with some terrible floods. So we've had some difficult days. + +But even when the days seemed darkest, we have seen humanity shine at its brightest. We've seen first responders and National Guardsmen who have dashed into danger, law enforcement officers who lived their oath to serve and to protect, and everyday Americans who are opening their homes and their hearts to perfect strangers. + +And we also saw journalists at their best -- especially those who took the time to wade upstream through the torrent of digital rumors to chase down leads and verify facts and painstakingly put the pieces together to inform, and to educate, and to tell stories that demanded to be told. + +If anyone wonders, for example, whether newspapers are a thing of the past, all you needed to do was to pick up or log on to papers like the Boston Globe. When their communities and the wider world needed them most, they were there making sense of events that might at first blush seem beyond our comprehension. And that’s what great journalism is, and that’s what great journalists do. And that’s why, for example, Pete Williams' new nickname around the NBC newsroom is "Big Papi." + +And in these past few weeks, as I've gotten a chance to meet many of the first responders and the police officers and volunteers who raced to help when hardship hits, I was reminded, as I'm always reminded when I meet our men and women in uniform, whether they're in war theater, or here back home, or at Walter Reed in Bethesda -- I'm reminded that all these folks, they don’t do it to be honored, they don’t do it to be celebrated. They do it because they love their families and they love their neighborhoods and they love their country. + +And so, these men and women should inspire all of us in this room to live up to those same standards; to be worthy of their trust; to do our jobs with the same fidelity, and the same integrity, and the same sense of purpose, and the same love of country. Because if we're only focused on profits or ratings or polls, then we're contributing to the cynicism that so many people feel right now. + +And so, those of us in this room tonight, we are incredibly lucky. And the fact is, we can do better -- all of us. Those of us in public office, those of us in the press, those who produce entertainment for our kids, those with power, those with influence -- all of us, including myself, we can strive to value those things that I suspect led most of us to do the work that we do in the first place -- because we believed in something that was true, and we believed in service, and the idea that we can have a lasting, positive impact on the lives of the people around us. + +And that’s our obligation. That’s a task we should gladly embrace on behalf of all of those folks who are counting on us; on behalf of this country that’s given us so much. + +So thank you all, to the White House Correspondents for the great work you do. + +God bless you all. + +May God bless the United States of America. diff --git a/Text/Walden.txt b/Text/Walden.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..31dcb3c --- /dev/null +++ b/Text/Walden.txt @@ -0,0 +1,875 @@ +When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. +I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. +I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars—even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up. +I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh. +But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:— + Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, + Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati. +Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,— + "From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care, + Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are." +So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell. +Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. +Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little. +I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination—what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. +The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. +When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about. +One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown. +The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?" +We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be. +The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels. +I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis. +Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors. +By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man's body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us—and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without—Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed. +The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live—that is, keep comfortably warm—and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course à la mode. +Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men? +When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?—for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season. +I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live—if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers—and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;—but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. + +If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished. +In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate. +I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. +To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. +So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun. +For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward. +For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility. +I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons. +In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that. +Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off—that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed—he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others? +Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or living anywhere else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. I determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish. +I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time—often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;—to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization—taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;—charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier—there is the untold fate of La Prouse;—universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man—such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge. +I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled; though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. +As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this—Who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master's premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where... people are judged of by their clothes." Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman's dress, at least, is never done. +A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet—if a hero ever has a valet—bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soirées and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes—his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind. +We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber, or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence? +When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, "They do not make them so now," not emphasizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity They are related to me, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the "they"—"It is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now." Of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to bang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy. +On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple. +The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires today. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. +I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. +As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says that "the Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow... in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than other people." But, probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of warmth, then the warmth of the affections. +We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion, any portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. From the hearth the field is a great distance. It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots. +However, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, "The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses." He adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one. +In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax, the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage's. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars (these are the country rates) entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fire-place, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages—it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life, even if he is not encumbered with a family—estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;—so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms? +It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself. Nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? +"As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel. +"Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die." +When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money—and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses—but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with éclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent. +The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman sings, + "The false society of men— + —for earthly greatness + All heavenly comforts rarefies to air." +And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free. +Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former? +But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and "silent poor." The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the South. But to confine myself to those who are said to be in moderate circumstances. +Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab's or the Indian's? When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allow—would it not be a singular allowance?—that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab's, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning's work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground. +It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated. I think that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a modern drawing-room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun-shades, and a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way. +The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantelpiece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so-called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth again beyond that distance. The first question which I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental. The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper. +Old Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth, at the highest side." They did not "provide them houses," says he, "till the earth, by the Lord's blessing, brought forth bread to feed them," and the first year's crop was so light that "they were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season." The secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to take up land there, states more particularly that "those in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the size of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, in the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling-houses in this fashion for two reasons: firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several thousands." +In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas! I have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with. +Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak understandingly on this subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practically. With a little more wit we might use these materials so as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilization a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage. But to make haste to my own experiment. +Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark-colored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog. +So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself,— + Men say they know many things; + But lo! they have taken wings— + The arts and sciences, + And a thousand appliances; + The wind that blows + Is all that any body knows. +I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in the woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had made. +By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins' shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it he was not at home. I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the sun. Doorsill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own words, they were "good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good window"—of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents tonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning, selling to nobody else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the road. One large bundle held their all—bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens—all but the cat; she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last. +I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond-side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodland path. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to represent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the gods of Troy. +I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was but two hours' work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow. +At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain, but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad. + +It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself. +True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, might have an almond or caraway seed in it—though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without the sugar—and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin merely—that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shell-fish its mother-o'-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builder—out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials. They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin—the architecture of the grave—and "carpenter" is but another name for "coffin-maker." One man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure he must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When you have got my ornaments ready, I will wear them. +Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane. +I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them:— + Boards.......................... $ 8.03-1/2;, mostly shanty boards. + Refuse shingles for roof sides... 4.00 + Laths............................ 1.25 + Two second-hand windows + with glass.................... 2.43 + One thousand old brick........... 4.00 + Two casks of lime................ 2.40 That was high. + Hair............................. 0.31 More than I needed. + Mantle-tree iron................. 0.15 + Nails............................ 3.90 + Hinges and screws................ 0.14 + Latch............................ 0.10 + Chalk............................ 0.01 + Transportation................... 1.40 I carried a good part + ———— on my back. + In all...................... $28.12-1/2 +These are all the materials, excepting the timber, stones, and sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house. +I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one. +I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy—chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man—I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student's room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both sides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme—a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection—to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. I think that it would be better than this, for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation themselves. The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful. "But," says one, "you do not mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?" I do not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think a good deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practised but the art of life;—to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month—the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers' penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?... To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation!—why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. +As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill. +One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether. +Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over—and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident." No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. "What!" exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt. + +Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was "good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on." I put no manure whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing, though I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first season were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72-1/2. The seed corn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income from the farm was + $ 23.44 + Deducting the outgoes............ 14.72-1/2 + ———— + There are left.................. $ 8.71-1/2 +beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made of the value of $4.50—the amount on hand much more than balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things considered, that is, considering the importance of a man's soul and of today, notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient character, I believe that that was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year. +The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it were with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak impartially on this point, and as one not interested in the success or failure of the present economical and social arrangements. I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I should have been nearly as well off as before. +I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boy's play. Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be. However, I should never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work he might do for me, for fear I should become a horseman or a herdsman merely; and if society seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one man's gain is not another's loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with his master to be satisfied? Granted that some public works would not have been constructed without this aid, and let man share the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it follow that he could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in that case? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works for the animal without him. Though we have many substantial houses of brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech in this county. It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man's field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life. The religion and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid temples; but what you might call Christianity does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to look down on it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East—to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them—who were above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics. +By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, though I lived there more than two years—not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what was on hand at the last date—was + Rice.................... $ 1.73-1/2 + Molasses................. 1.73 Cheapest form of the + saccharine. + Rye meal................. 1.04-3/4 + Indian meal.............. 0.99-3/4 Cheaper than rye. + Pork..................... 0.22 + All experiments which failed: + Flour.................... 0.88 Costs more than Indian meal, + both money and trouble. + Sugar.................... 0.80 + Lard..................... 0.65 + Apples................... 0.25 + Dried apple.............. 0.22 + Sweet potatoes........... 0.10 + One pumpkin.............. 0.06 + One watermelon........... 0.02 + Salt..................... 0.03 +Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no better in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field—effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say—and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher. +Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to + $8.40-3/4 + Oil and some household utensils........ 2.00 +So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills have not yet been received—and these are all and more than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part of the world—were + House................................. $ 28.12-1/2 + Farm one year........................... 14.72-1/2 + Food eight months....................... 8.74 + Clothing, etc., eight months............ 8.40-3/4 + Oil, etc., eight months................. 2.00 + —————— + In all............................ $ 61.99-3/4 +I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold + $23.44 + Earned by day-labor.................... 13.34 + ———— + In all............................. $36.78, +which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of $25.21-3/4 on the one side—this being very nearly the means with which I started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred—and on the other, beside the leisure and independence and health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it. +These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account. It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt; and my drink, water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who love so well the philosophy of India. To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I have stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative statement like this. +I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (Portulaca oleracea) which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was a yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only. +The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not venture to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder. +Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire—some precious bottleful, I suppose, first brought over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the land—this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable—for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process—and I have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I put any sal-soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would seem that I made it according to the recipe which Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. "Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, aquae paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu." Which I take to mean,—"Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a cover," that is, in a baking kettle. Not a word about leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a month. +Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the most part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I saw that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest land, and the latter does not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork; and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I found by experiment that I could make a very good molasses either of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were growing I could use various substitutes beside those which I have named. "For," as the Forefathers sang,— + "we can make liquor to sweeten our lips + Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips." +Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did without it altogether, I should probably drink the less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it. +Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a farmer's family—thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer;—and in a new country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was sold—namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it. +There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once—for the root is faith—I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, may be alarmed. + +My furniture, part of which I made myself—and the rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an account—consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? That is Spaulding's furniture. I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviœ: at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them—dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead set! "Sir, if I may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?" If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway he can. I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a knot-hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot follow him. I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his "furniture," as whether it is insured or not. "But what shall I do with my furniture?"—My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody's barn. I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. Throw away the first three at least. It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run. When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all—looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his neck—I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had all that to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But perchance it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it. +I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet; and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping. A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. +Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual:— + "The evil that men do lives after them." +As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father's day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust. +The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first fruits," as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? "When a town celebrates the busk," says he, "having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town." +"On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame." +They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing for three days, "and the four following days they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like manner purified and prepared themselves." +The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an end. +I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no Biblical record of the revelation. + +For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice—for my greatest skill has been to want but little—so little capital it required, so little distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business. +As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do—work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other. +In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do. +One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the means. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course. +Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer still for a thousand, as a large house is not proportionally more expensive than a small one, since one roof may cover, one cellar underlie, and one wall separate several apartments. But for my part, I preferred the solitary dwelling. Moreover, it will commonly be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convince another of the advantage of the common wall; and when you have done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that other may prove a bad neighbor, and also not keep his side in repair. The only co-operation which is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true co-operation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will co-operate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To co-operate in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be companions or co-operate, since one would not operate at all. They would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures. Above all, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off. + +But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to do—for the devil finds employment for the idle—I might try my hand at some such pastime as that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I would not stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say, Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely they will. +I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt many of my readers would make a similar defence. At doing something—I will not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good—I do not hesitate to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. What good I do, in the common sense of that word, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, I should say rather, Set about being good. As if the sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the meanwhile too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going about him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly birth by his beneficence, had the sun's chariot but one day, and drove out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and dried up every spring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year. +There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me—some of its virus mingled with my blood. No—in this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much. Philanthropy is not love for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred Howards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of a philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me, or the like of me. +The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did. +Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday's liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice? +Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. The last were not England's best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists. +I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. From what southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would redeem? If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even—for that is the seat of sympathy—he forthwith sets about reforming—the world. Being a microcosm himself, he discovers—and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make it—that the world has been eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimau and the Patagonian, and embraces the populous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself. +I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. Take your time, and set about some free labor. +Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God. All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it. If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world. +I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this? He replied, Each has its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of this nature are the azads, or religious independents.—Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress." + COMPLEMENTAL VERSES + + The Pretensions of Poverty + + Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch, + To claim a station in the firmament + Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub, + Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue + In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, + With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand, + Tearing those humane passions from the mind, + Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, + Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, + And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. + We not require the dull society + Of your necessitated temperance, + Or that unnatural stupidity + That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd + Falsely exalted passive fortitude + Above the active. This low abject brood, + That fix their seats in mediocrity, + Become your servile minds; but we advance + Such virtues only as admit excess, + Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, + All-seeing prudence, magnanimity + That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue + For which antiquity hath left no name, + But patterns only, such as Hercules, + Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell; + And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere, + Study to know but what those worthies were. + T. CAREW + + +Where I Lived, and What I Lived For + +At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it—took everything but a deed of it—took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk—cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat?—better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. +My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms—the refusal was all I wanted—but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife—every man has such a wife—changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes, + "I am monarch of all I survey, + My right there is none to dispute." +I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk. +The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders—I never heard what compensation he received for that—and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said. +All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale—I have always cultivated a garden—was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail. +Old Cato, whose "De Re Rusticâ" is my "Cultivator," says—and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage—"When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last. + +The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. +When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere. +The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning." Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those smaller and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager—the wood thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many others. +I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains. +This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being, shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hill-top near by, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of interverting water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land. +Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all the roving families of men. "There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon"—said Damodara, when his herds required new and larger pastures. +Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of creation where I had squatted; + "There was a shepherd that did live, + And held his thoughts as high + As were the mounts whereon his flocks + Did hourly feed him by." +What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts? +Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tchingthang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air—to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? +We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done. +I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever." +Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again. +Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire—or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. "Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe"—and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself. +For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life—I wrote this some years ago—that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure—news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions—they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers—and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted. +What news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old! "Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!" The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week—for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one—with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?" +Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that "there was a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father's ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme." I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where, think you, would the "Mill-dam" go to? If he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. +Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry—determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business. +Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine. + + +Reading + +With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future. +My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mîr Camar Uddîn Mast, "Being seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." I kept Homer's Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that I lived. +The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are still reading it. +However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him. +No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;—not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family. +Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor Æschylus, nor Virgil even—works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last. +The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to. +I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled "Little Reading," which I thought referred to a town of that name which I had not been to. There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. They read the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run smooth—at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the world to come together and hear, O dear! how he did get down again! For my part, I think that they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man weather-cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down. "The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author of 'Tittle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don't all come together." All this they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella—without any improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market. +The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so-called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is about as much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;—and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins. +I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him—my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper. +It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not true; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and had the same experience; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to have invented and established worship among men. Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ himself, and let "our church" go by the board. +We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked—goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure—if they are, indeed, so well off—to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?—not be sucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know anything. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture—genius—learning—wit—books— paintings—statuary—music—philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do—not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us. + + +Sounds + +But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity. +I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. +I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and bedsteads—because they once stood in their midst. +My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub oaks and sand cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May, the sand cherry (Cerasus pumila) adorned the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with good-sized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. The sumach (Rhus glabra) grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs. + +As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by two and threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pine boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the country. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, but ere long ran away and came home again, quite down at the heel and homesick. He had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; the folks were all gone off; why, you couldn't even hear the whistle! I doubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts now:— + "In truth, our village has become a butt + For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er + Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is—Concord." +The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth. +The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, they shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here's your pay for them! screams the countryman's whistle; timber like long battering-rams going twenty miles an hour against the city's walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes them. +When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary motion—or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curve—with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light—as if this traveling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology I don't know), it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer's fields, then the elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort. +I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up early this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early to put the vital heat in him and get him off. If the enterprise were as innocent as it is early! If the snow lies deep, they strap on his snowshoes, and, with the giant plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed flies over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied! +Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings. To do things "railroad fashion" is now the byword; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of the compass; yet it interferes with no man's business, and the children go to school on the other track. We live the steadier for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then. +What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men every day go about their business with more or less courage and content, doing more even than they suspect, and perchance better employed than they could have consciously devised. I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snowplow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, I bear the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England northeast snow-storm, and I behold the plowmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peering, above the mould-board which is turning down other than daisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe. +Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular success. I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the history of the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They are proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was split up; pine, spruce, cedar—first, second, third, and fourth qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will get far among the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest condition to which cotton and linen descend, the final result of dress—of patterns which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in Milwaukee, as those splendid articles, English, French, or American prints, ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered from all quarters both of fashion and poverty, going to become paper of one color or a few shades only, on which, forsooth, will be written tales of real life, high and low, and founded on fact! This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong New England and commercial scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and the fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun, wind, and rain behind it—and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dun-fish for a Saturday's dinner. Next Spanish hides, with the tails still preserving their twist and the angle of elevation they had when the oxen that wore them were careering over the pampas of the Spanish Main—a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices. I confess, that practically speaking, when I have learned a man's real disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse in this state of existence. As the Orientals say, "A cur's tail may be warmed, and pressed, and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years' labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form." The only effectual cure for such inveteracies as these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe is what is usually done with them, and then they will stay put and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands over his bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on the coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling his customers this moment, as he has told them twenty times before this morning, that he expects some by the next train of prime quality. It is advertised in the Cuttingsville Times. +While these things go up other things come down. Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which has winged its way over the Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it; going + "to be the mast + Of some great ammiral." +And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains by the September gales. The air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by. When the old bell-wether at the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the little hills like lambs. A carload of drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of office. But their dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to them; they are quite thrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them barking behind the Peterboro' Hills, or panting up the western slope of the Green Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below par now. They will slink back to their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wild and strike a league with the wolf and the fox. So is your pastoral life whirled past and away. But the bell rings, and I must get off the track and let the cars go by;— + What's the railroad to me? + I never go to see + Where it ends. + It fills a few hollows, + And makes banks for the swallows, + It sets the sand a-blowing, + And the blackberries a-growing, +but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing. + +Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway. +Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph. +At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at first I would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom I was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying over hill and dale; but soon I was not unpleasantly disappointed when it was prolonged into the cheap and natural music of the cow. I do not mean to be satirical, but to express my appreciation of those youths' singing, when I state that I perceived clearly that it was akin to the music of the cow, and they were at length one articulation of Nature. +Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the summer, after the evening train had gone by, the whip-poor-wills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the ridge-pole of the house. They would begin to sing almost with as much precision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. I had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with their habits. Sometimes I heard four or five at once in different parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that I distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web, only proportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when probably I was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout the night, and were again as musical as ever just before and about dawn. +When other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then—that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and—bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods. +I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir the dying moans of a human being—some poor weak relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling melodiousness—I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I try to imitate it—expressive of a mind which has reached the gelatinous, mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy and courageous thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane howlings. But now one answers from far woods in a strain made really melodious by distance—Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo; and indeed for the most part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether heard by day or night, summer or winter. +I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there. +Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of wagons over bridges—a sound heard farther than almost any other at night—the baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. In the mean-while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake—if the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there—who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, with his chin upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r—oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway comes over the water from some distant cove the same password repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake; and then the howl goes round again and again, until the sun disperses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and pausing for a reply. +I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird's, and if they could be naturalized without being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses when their lords' clarions rested! No wonder that man added this bird to his tame stock—to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of other birds—think of it! It would put nations on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign bird's note is celebrated by the poets of all countries along with the notes of their native songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning-wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or rather were never baited in—only squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whip-poor-will on the ridge-pole, a blue jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech owl or a cat owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard! but unfenced nature reaching up to your very sills. A young forest growing up under your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale—a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow—no gate—no front-yard—and no path to the civilized world. + + +Solitude + +This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature's watchmen—links which connect the days of animated life. +When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe. +There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night there was never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door, more than if I were the first or last man; unless it were in the spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts—they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond of their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness—but they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left "the world to darkness and to me," and the black kernel of the night was never profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. +Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was Æolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again. + "Mourning untimely consumes the sad; + Few are their days in the land of the living, + Beautiful daughter of Toscar." +Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder-shower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such—This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar.... I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called "a handsome property"—though I never got a fair view of it—on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton—or Bright-town—which place he would reach some time in the morning. +Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are. +"How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth!" +"We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of things, they cannot be separated from them." +"They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on all sides." +We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances—have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors." +With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. +I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it. +Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory—never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him. +I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone. +I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone—but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. +I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider—a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet. +The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature—of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter—such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself? +What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but our great-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow black-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor Æsculapius, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks; but rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring. + + +Visitors + +I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither. +I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another. Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to be extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement. +One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side. In my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear—we could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other's undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other's breath; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other's voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough. +My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order. +If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the meanwhile. But if twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing said about dinner, though there might be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a forsaken habit; but we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never felt to be an offence against hospitality, but the most proper and considerate course. The waste and decay of physical life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously retarded in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its ground. I could entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my house when they found me at home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized with them at least. So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for a card:— + "Arrivèd there, the little house they fill, + Ne looke for entertainment where none was; + Rest is their feast, and all things at their will: + The noblest mind the best contentment has." +When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth Colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to Massasoit on foot through the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well received by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day. When the night arrived, to quote their own words—"He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks laid a foot from the ground and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey." At one o'clock the next day Massasoit "brought two fishes that he had shot," about thrice as big as a bream. "These being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them; the most eat of them. This meal only we had in two nights and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our journey fasting." Fearing that they would be light-headed for want of food and also sleep, owing to "the savages' barbarous singing, (for they use to sing themselves asleep,)" and that they might get home while they had strength to travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they were but poorly entertained, though what they found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor; but as far as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indians could have done better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they were wiser than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to their guests; so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing about it. Another time when Winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect. +As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period in my life; I mean that I had some. I met several there under more favorable circumstances than I could anywhere else. But fewer came to see me on trivial business. In this respect, my company was winnowed by my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so far within the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of society empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited around me. Beside, there were wafted to me evidences of unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other side. +Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man—he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here—a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has heard of Homer, and, "if it were not for books," would "not know what to do rainy days," though perhaps he has not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons. Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read his verse in the Testament in his native parish far away; and now I must translate to him, while he holds the book, Achilles' reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance.—"Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?"— + "Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia? + They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor, + And Peleus lives, son of Æacus, among the Myrmidons, + Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve." +He says, "That's good." He has a great bundle of white oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. "I suppose there's no harm in going after such a thing to-day," says he. To him Homer was a great writer, though what his writing was about he did not know. A more simple and natural man it would be hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombre moral hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any existence for him. He was about twenty-eight years old, and had left Canada and his father's house a dozen years before to work in the States, and earn money to buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. He was cast in the coarsest mould; a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with expression. He wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past my house—for he chopped all summer—in a tin pail; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his belt; and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came along early, crossing my bean-field, though without anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit. He wasn't a-going to hurt himself. He didn't care if he only earned his board. Frequently he would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, after deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till nightfall—loving to dwell long upon these themes. He would say, as he went by in the morning, "How thick the pigeons are! If working every day were not my trade, I could get all the meat I should want by hunting-pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges—by gosh! I could get all I should want for a week in one day." +He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and ornaments in his art. He cut his trees level and close to the ground, that the sprouts which came up afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off with your hand at last. +He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal; a well of good humor and contentment which overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work in the woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Canadian French, though he spoke English as well. When I approached him he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed and talked. Such an exuberance of animal spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground with laughter at anything which made him think and tickled him. Looking round upon the trees he would exclaim—"By George! I can enjoy myself well enough here chopping; I want no better sport." Sometimes, when at leisure, he amused himself all day in the woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at regular intervals as he walked. In the winter he had a fire by which at noon he warmed his coffee in a kettle; and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner the chickadees would sometimes come round and alight on his arm and peck at the potato in his fingers; and he said that he "liked to have the little fellers about him." +In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to the pine and the rock. I asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night, after working all day; and he answered, with a sincere and serious look, "Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life." But the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child. When Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and contentment for his portion, and propped him on every side with reverence and reliance, that he might live out his threescore years and ten a child. He was so genuine and unsophisticated that no introduction would serve to introduce him, more than if you introduced a woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to find him out as you did. He would not play any part. Men paid him wages for work, and so helped to feed and clothe him; but he never exchanged opinions with them. He was so simply and naturally humble—if he can be called humble who never aspires—that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it. Wiser men were demigods to him. If you told him that such a one was coming, he did as if he thought that anything so grand would expect nothing of himself, but take all the responsibility on itself, and let him be forgotten still. He never heard the sound of praise. He particularly reverenced the writer and the preacher. Their performances were miracles. When I told him that I wrote considerably, he thought for a long time that it was merely the handwriting which I meant, for he could write a remarkably good hand himself. I sometimes found the name of his native parish handsomely written in the snow by the highway, with the proper French accent, and knew that he had passed. I asked him if he ever wished to write his thoughts. He said that he had read and written letters for those who could not, but he never tried to write thoughts—no, he could not, he could not tell what to put first, it would kill him, and then there was spelling to be attended to at the same time! +I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked him if he did not want the world to be changed; but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Canadian accent, not knowing that the question had ever been entertained before, "No, I like it well enough." It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told me that when he met him sauntering through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and whistling to himself, he reminded him of a prince in disguise. +His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which last he was considerably expert. The former was a sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day, and he never failed to look at them in the most simple and practical light. He had never heard of such things before. Could he do without factories? I asked. He had worn the home-made Vermont gray, he said, and that was good. Could he dispense with tea and coffee? Did this country afford any beverage beside water? He had soaked hemlock leaves in water and drank it, and thought that was better than water in warm weather. When I asked him if he could do without money, he showed the convenience of money in such a way as to suggest and coincide with the most philosophical accounts of the origin of this institution, and the very derivation of the word pecunia. If an ox were his property, and he wished to get needles and thread at the store, he thought it would be inconvenient and impossible soon to go on mortgaging some portion of the creature each time to that amount. He could defend many institutions better than any philosopher, because, in describing them as they concerned him, he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to him any other. At another time, hearing Plato's definition of a man—a biped without feathers—and that one exhibited a cock plucked and called it Plato's man, he thought it an important difference that the knees bent the wrong way. He would sometimes exclaim, "How I love to talk! By George, I could talk all day!" I asked him once, when I had not seen him for many months, if he had got a new idea this summer. "Good Lord"—said he, "a man that has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. May be the man you hoe with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there; you think of weeds." He would sometimes ask me first on such occasions, if I had made any improvement. One winter day I asked him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the priest without, and some higher motive for living. "Satisfied!" said he; "some men are satisfied with one thing, and some with another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table, by George!" Yet I never, by any manoeuvring, could get him to take the spiritual view of things; the highest that he appeared to conceive of was a simple expediency, such as you might expect an animal to appreciate; and this, practically, is true of most men. If I suggested any improvement in his mode of life, he merely answered, without expressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet he thoroughly believed in honesty and the like virtues. +There was a certain positive originality, however slight, to be detected in him, and I occasionally observed that he was thinking for himself and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it, and it amounted to the re-origination of many of the institutions of society. Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express himself distinctly, he always had a presentable thought behind. Yet his thinking was so primitive and immersed in his animal life, that, though more promising than a merely learned man's, it rarely ripened to anything which can be reported. He suggested that there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of life, however permanently humble and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do not pretend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy. +Many a traveller came out of his way to see me and the inside of my house, and, as an excuse for calling, asked for a glass of water. I told them that I drank at the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper. Far off as I lived, I was not exempted from the annual visitation which occurs, methinks, about the first of April, when everybody is on the move; and I had my share of good luck, though there were some curious specimens among my visitors. Half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me; but I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions to me; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was compensated. Indeed, I found some of them to be wiser than the so-called overseers of the poor and selectmen of the town, and thought it was time that the tables were turned. With respect to wit, I learned that there was not much difference between the half and the whole. One day, in particular, an inoffensive, simple-minded pauper, whom with others I had often seen used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in the fields to keep cattle and himself from straying, visited me, and expressed a wish to live as I did. He told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is called humility, that he was "deficient in intellect." These were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed the Lord cared as much for him as for another. "I have always been so," said he, "from my childhood; I never had much mind; I was not like other children; I am weak in the head. It was the Lord's will, I suppose." And there he was to prove the truth of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I have rarely met a fellowman on such promising ground—it was so simple and sincere and so true all that he said. And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared to humble himself was he exalted. I did not know at first but it was the result of a wise policy. It seemed that from such a basis of truth and frankness as the poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse might go forward to something better than the intercourse of sages. +I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among the town's poor, but who should be; who are among the world's poor, at any rate; guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, but to your hospitalality; who earnestly wish to be helped, and preface their appeal with the information that they are resolved, for one thing, never to help themselves. I require of a visitor that he be not actually starving, though he may have the very best appetite in the world, however he got it. Objects of charity are not guests. Men who did not know when their visit had terminated, though I went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness. Men of almost every degree of wit called on me in the migrating season. Some who had more wits than they knew what to do with; runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as to say,— + "O Christian, will you send me back? +One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to forward toward the north star. Men of one idea, like a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling; men of a thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens which are made to take charge of a hundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost in every morning's dew—and become frizzled and mangy in consequence; men of ideas instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede that made you crawl all over. One man proposed a book in which visitors should write their names, as at the White Mountains; but, alas! I have too good a memory to make that necessary. +I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my visitors. Girls and boys and young women generally seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked in the pond and at the flowers, and improved their time. Men of business, even farmers, thought only of solitude and employment, and of the great distance at which I dwelt from something or other; and though they said that they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was obvious that they did not. Restless committed men, whose time was an taken up in getting a living or keeping it; ministers who spoke of God as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who could not bear all kinds of opinions; doctors, lawyers, uneasy housekeepers who pried into my cupboard and bed when I was out—how came Mrs.—to know that my sheets were not as clean as hers?—young men who had ceased to be young, and had concluded that it was safest to follow the beaten track of the professions—all these generally said that it was not possible to do so much good in my position. Ay! there was the rub. The old and infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them life seemed full of danger—what danger is there if you don't think of any?—and they thought that a prudent man would carefully select the safest position, where Dr. B. might be on hand at a moment's warning. To them the village was literally a com-munity, a league for mutual defence, and you would suppose that they would not go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. Finally, there were the self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all, who thought that I was forever singing,— + This is the house that I built; + This is the man that lives in the house that I built; +but they did not know that the third line was, + These are the folks that worry the man + That lives in the house that I built. +I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens; but I feared the men-harriers rather. +I had more cheering visitors than the last. Children come a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philosophers; in short, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for freedom's sake, and really left the village behind, I was ready to greet with—"Welcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!" for I had had communication with that race. + + +The Bean-Field + +Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor all summer—to make this portion of the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes. +When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought from Boston to this my native town, through these very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of the oldest scenes stamped on my memory. And now to-night my flute has waked the echoes over that very water. The pines still stand here older than I; or, if some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their stumps, and a new growth is rising all around, preparing another aspect for new infant eyes. Almost the same johnswort springs from the same perennial root in this pasture, and even I have at length helped to clothe that fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, and one of the results of my presence and influence is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines. +I planted about two acres and a half of upland; and as it was only about fifteen years since the land was cleared, and I myself had got out two or three cords of stumps, I did not give it any manure; but in the course of the summer it appeared by the arrowheads which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nation had anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men came to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted the soil for this very crop. +Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or the sun had got above the shrub oaks, while all the dew was on, though the farmers warned me against it—I would advise you to do all your work if possible while the dew is on—I began to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my bean-field and throw dust upon their heads. Early in the morning I worked barefooted, dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling sand, but later in the day the sun blistered my feet. There the sun lighted me to hoe beans, pacing slowly backward and forward over that yellow gravelly upland, between the long green rows, fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a shrub oak copse where I could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field where the green berries deepened their tints by the time I had made another bout. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass—this was my daily work. As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual. But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result. A very agricola laboriosus was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil. But soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought. It was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the road, so they made the most of it; and sometimes the man in the field heard more of travellers' gossip and comment than was meant for his ear: "Beans so late! peas so late!"—for I continued to plant when others had begun to hoe—the ministerial husbandman had not suspected it. "Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn for fodder." "Does he live there?" asks the black bonnet of the gray coat; and the hard-featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin to inquire what you are doing where he sees no manure in the furrow, and recommends a little chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster. But here were two acres and a half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands to draw it—there being an aversion to other carts and horses—and chip dirt far away. Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it aloud with the fields which they had passed, so that I came to know how I stood in the agricultural world. This was one field not in Mr. Coleman's report. And, by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? The crop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond-holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them. +Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brown thrasher—or red mavis, as some love to call him—all the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer's field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed, he cries—"Drop it, drop it—cover it up, cover it up—pull it up, pull it up, pull it up." But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith. +As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil. When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons—for I sometimes made a day of it—like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in nature. The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching, and leaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers. +On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionally penetrate thus far. To me, away there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when there was a military turnout of which I was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until at length some more favorable puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me information of the "trainers." It seemed by the distant hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and that the neighbors, according to Virgil's advice, by a faint tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were endeavoring to call them down into the hive again. And when the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes told no tale, I knew that they had got the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey with which it was smeared. +I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping; and as I turned to my hoeing again I was filled with an inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in the future. +When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows and all the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately with a din. But sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a good relish—for why should we always stand for trifles?—and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon. These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm tree tops which overhang the village. This was one of the great days; though the sky had from my clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it. +It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling them—the last was the hardest of all—I might add eating, for I did taste. I was determined to know beans. When they were growing, I used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and commonly spent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds—it will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the labor—disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another. That's Roman wormwood—that's pigweed—that's sorrel—that's piper-grass—have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he'll turn himself t' other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest—waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust. +Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and others to contemplation in India, and others to trade in London or New York, I thus, with the other farmers of New England, devoted to husbandry. Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice; but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. It was on the whole a rare amusement, which, continued too long, might have become a dissipation. Though I gave them no manure, and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusually well as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, "there being in truth," as Evelyn says, "no compost or laetation whatsoever comparable to this continual motion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the spade." "The earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this improvement." Moreover, this being one of those "worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath," had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the air. I harvested twelve bushels of beans. +But to be more particular, for it is complained that Mr. Coleman has reported chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were,— + For a hoe................................... $ 0.54 + Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing............ 7.50 Too much. + Beans for seed............................... 3.12-1/2 + Potatoes for seed............................ 1.33 + Peas for seed................................ 0.40 + Turnip seed.................................. 0.06 + White line for crow fence.................... 0.02 + Horse cultivator and boy three hours......... 1.00 + Horse and cart to get crop................... 0.75 + ———— + In all.................................. $14.72-1/2 +My income was (patrem familias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet), from + Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold.. $16.94 + Five " large potatoes..................... 2.50 + Nine " small.............................. 2.25 + Grass........................................... 1.00 + Stalks.......................................... 0.75 + ———— + In all.................................... $23.44 + Leaving a pecuniary profit, + as I have elsewhere said, of.............. $8.71-1/2 +This is the result of my experience in raising beans: Plant the common small white bush bean about the first of June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, being careful to select fresh round and unmixed seed. First look out for worms, and supply vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for woodchucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go; and again, when the young tendrils make their appearance, they have notice of it, and will shear them off with both buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. But above all harvest as early as possible, if you would escape frosts and have a fair and salable crop; you may save much loss by this means. +This further experience also I gained: I said to myself, I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops. Alas! I said this to myself; but now another summer is gone, and another, and another, and I am obliged to say to you, Reader, that the seeds which I planted, if indeed they were the seeds of those virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their vitality, and so did not come up. Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid. This generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago and taught the first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it. I saw an old man the other day, to my astonishment, making the holes with a hoe for the seventieth time at least, and not for himself to lie down in! But why should not the New Englander try new adventures, and not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards—raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men? We should really be fed and cheered if when we met a man we were sure to see that some of the qualities which I have named, which we all prize more than those other productions, but which are for the most part broadcast and floating in the air, had taken root and grown in him. Here comes such a subtile and ineffable quality, for instance, as truth or justice, though the slightest amount or new variety of it, along the road. Our ambassadors should be instructed to send home such seeds as these, and Congress help to distribute them over all the land. We should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste. Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans. We would not deal with a man thus plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a staff between his work, not as a mushroom, but partially risen out of the earth, something more than erect, like swallows alighted and walking on the ground:— + "And as he spake, his wings would now and then + Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again—" +so that we should suspect that we might be conversing with an angel. Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy. +Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Cato says that the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just (maximeque pius quaestus), and according to Varro the old Romans "called the same earth Mother and Ceres, and thought that they who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, and that they alone were left of the race of King Saturn." +We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests without distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but a small part of the glorious picture which he beholds in his daily course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and heat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What though I value the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the fall of the year? This broad field which I have looked at so long looks not to me as the principal cultivator, but away from me to influences more genial to it, which water and make it green. These beans have results which are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for woodchucks partly? The ear of wheat (in Latin spica, obsoletely speca, from spe, hope) should not be the only hope of the husbandman; its kernel or grain (granum from gerendo, bearing) is not all that it bears. How, then, can our harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds? It matters little comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer's barns. The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also. + + +The Village + +After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust of labor from my person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homoeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits. The village appeared to me a great news room; and on one side, to support it, as once at Redding & Company's on State Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. Some have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it only producing numbness and insensibility to pain—otherwise it would often be painful to bear—without affecting the consciousness. I hardly ever failed, when I rambled through the village, to see a row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with their bodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places; and the houses were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. Of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head of the line, where they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at him, paid the highest prices for their places; and the few straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or turn aside into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's; and others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus, who, "loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger." Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence. I was even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses, where I was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last sieveful of news—what had subsided, the prospects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together much longer—I was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again. +It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as I sailed." I was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. Several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I directed thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in the pond. They lived about a mile off through the woods, and were quite used to the route. A day or two after one of them told me that they wandered about the greater part of the night, close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which time, as there had been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is. Some who live in the outskirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not knowing when they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. +One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. The Pope's Homers would soon get properly distributed. + "Nec bella fuerunt, + Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes." + + "Nor wars did men molest, + When only beechen bowls were in request." +"You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass—the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends." + + +The Ponds + +Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, "to fresh woods and pastures new," or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cowboy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country's hills. +Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of Cœnobites. There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech. When, as was commonly the case, I had none to commune with, I used to raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hillside. +In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seem to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a companion, and, making a fire close to the water's edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a thread, and when we had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, coming down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my home by the shore. +Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and, partly with a view to the next day's dinner, spent the hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand. These experiences were very memorable and valuable to me—anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull uncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. At length you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned pout squeaking and squirming to the upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook. + +The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation. The surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east they attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclusively woodland. All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand. The first depends more on the light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark slate-color. The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the atmosphere. I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass. Some consider blue "to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid." But, looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad sandbank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris. This is that portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous greenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches of the winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a single glass of its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal quantity of air. It is well known that a large plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its "body," but a small piece of the same will be colorless. How large a body of Walden water would be required to reflect a green tint I have never proved. The water of our river is black or a very dark brown to one looking directly down on it, and, like that of most ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified and distorted withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit studies for a Michael Angelo. +The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. Paddling over it, you may see, many feet beneath the surface, the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter, many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the holes, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out again. +The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all which however a bather might not perceive; and these plants are clean and bright like the element they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in midwinter. +We have one other pond just like this, White Pond, in Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half miles westerly; but, though I am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this centre I do not know a third of this pure and well-like character. Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring! Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to rise and fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now wear, and obtained a patent of Heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many unremembered nations' literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain? or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age? It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet. +Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built here may still preserve some trace of this. +The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and, on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them, that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was long since converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now, in the summer of '52, is just five feet higher than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint's Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation goes, of White Pond. +This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use at least; the water standing at this great height for a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edge since the last rise—pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others—and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side of the pond next my house a row of pitch pines, fifteen feet high, has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of the lake, on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to time. When the water is at its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, and to the height of three or four feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves; and I have known the high blueberry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these circumstances. +Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition—the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth—that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality—Saffron Walden, for instance—one might suppose that it was called originally Walled-in Pond. +The pond was my well ready dug. For four months in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times; and I think that it is then as good as any, if not the best, in the town. In the winter, all water which is exposed to the air is colder than springs and wells which are protected from it. The temperature of the pond water which had stood in the room where I sat from five o'clock in the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of March, 1846, the thermometer having been up to 65° or 70° some of the time, owing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42°, or one degree colder than the water of one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling Spring the same day was 45°, or the warmest of any water tried, though it is the coldest that I know of in summer, when, beside, shallow and stagnant surface water is not mingled with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. In the warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where it became cool in the night, and remained so during the day; though I also resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when a week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of the pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer by the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the luxury of ice. +There have been caught in Walden pickerel, one weighing seven pounds—to say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he did not see him—perch and pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach (Leuciscus pulchellus), a very few breams, and a couple of eels, one weighing four pounds—I am thus particular because the weight of a fish is commonly its only title to fame, and these are the only eels I have heard of here;—also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast. I have seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds: a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most like those caught in the river; a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and remarkably deep, which is the most common here; and another, golden-colored, and shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones, very much like a trout. The specific name reticulatus would not apply to this; it should be guttatus rather. These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their size promises. The shiners, pouts, and perch also, and indeed all the fishes which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and firmer-fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, as the water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished from them. Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties of some of them. There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a few mussels in it; muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teeter" along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fish hawk sitting on a white pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wind of a gull, like Fair Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of consequence which frequent it now. +You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, consisting of small stones less than a hen's egg in size, where all around is bare sand. At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom; but they are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for that. They are similar to those found in rivers; but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know not by what fish they could be made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom. +The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have in my mind's eye the western, indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves between. The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which rise from the water's edge; for the water in which it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field abuts on it. The trees have ample room to expand on the water side, and each sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. +A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows. +Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore-line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. You would think that you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below this line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over the pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low as to touch it. It may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From a hilltop you can see a fish leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonderful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised—this piscine murder will out—and from my distant perch I distinguish the circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods in diameter. You can even detect a water-bug (Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their havens and adventurously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they completely cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo! +In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;—a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush—this the light dust-cloth—which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still. +A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. +The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come; and then and in November, usually, in a calm day, there is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. One November afternoon, in the calm at the end of a rain-storm of several days' duration, when the sky was still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I observed that the pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to distinguish its surface; though it no longer reflected the bright tints of October, but the sombre November colors of the surrounding hills. Though I passed over it as gently as possible, the slight undulations produced by my boat extended almost as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the reflections. But, as I was looking over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts might be collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a spring welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently to one of these places, I was surprised to find myself surrounded by myriads of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in the green water, sporting there, and constantly rising to the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they were a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my level on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them. There were many such schools in the pond, apparently improving the short season before winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden splash and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface. Even as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some dimples on the surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the air being full of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars and row homeward; already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had seared into the depths, and I saw their schools dimly disappearing; so I spent a dry afternoon after all. +An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other water-fowl, and that there were many eagles about it. He came here a-fishing, and used an old log canoe which he found on the shore. It was made of two white pine logs dug out and pinned together, and was cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy, but lasted a great many years before it became water-logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not know whose it was; it belonged to the pond. He used to make a cable for his anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together. An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at the bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the same material but more graceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. I remember that when I first looked into these depths there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared. +When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its coves grape-vines had run over the trees next the water and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some land of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk. But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down? +Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with!—to earn their Walden by the turning of a cock or drawing of a plug! That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hill, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? +Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is perennially young, and I may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its surface as of yore. It struck me again tonight, as if I had not seen it almost daily for more than twenty years—Why, here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; the same thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it may be to me. It is the work of a brave man surely, in whom there was no guile! He rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified it in his thought, and in his will bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face that it is visited by the same reflection; and I can almost say, Walden, is it you? + It is no dream of mine, + To ornament a line; + I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven + Than I live to Walden even. + I am its stony shore, + And the breeze that passes o'er; + In the hollow of my hand + Are its water and its sand, + And its deepest resort + Lies high in my thought. +The cars never pause to look at it; yet I fancy that the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers who have a season ticket and see it often, are better men for the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or his nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at least during the day. Though seen but once, it helps to wash out State Street and the engine's soot. One proposes that it be called "God's Drop." +I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave? + +Flint's, or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest lake and inland sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It is much larger, being said to contain one hundred and ninety-seven acres, and is more fertile in fish; but it is comparatively shallow, and not remarkably pure. A walk through the woods thither was often my recreation. It was worth the while, if only to feel the wind blow on your cheek freely, and see the waves run, and remember the life of mariners. I went a-chestnutting there in the fall, on windy days, when the nuts were dropping into the water and were washed to my feet; and one day, as I crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh spray blowing in my face, I came upon the mouldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone, and hardly more than the impression of its flat bottom left amid the rushes; yet its model was sharply defined, as if it were a large decayed pad, with its veins. It was as impressive a wreck as one could imagine on the seashore, and had as good a moral. It is by this time mere vegetable mould and undistinguishable pond shore, through which rushes and flags have pushed up. I used to admire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of this pond, made firm and hard to the feet of the wader by the pressure of the water, and the rushes which grew in Indian file, in waving lines, corresponding to these marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves had planted them. There also I have found, in considerable quantities, curious balls, composed apparently of fine grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from half an inch to four inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical. These wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bottom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are either solid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At first you would say that they were formed by the action of the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials, half an inch long, and they are produced only at one season of the year. Moreover, the waves, I suspect, do not so much construct as wear down a material which has already acquired consistency. They preserve their form when dry for an indefinite period. +Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomenclature. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and bony talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like;—so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him—him who thought only of its money value; whose presence perchance cursed all the shores; who exhausted the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters within it; who regretted only that it was not English hay or cranberry meadow—there was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in his eyes—and would have drained and sold it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was no privilege to him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor—poor farmers. A model farm! where the house stands like a fungus in a muckheap, chambers for men, horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and uncleansed, all contiguous to one another! Stocked with men! A great grease-spot, redolent of manures and buttermilk! Under a high state of cultivation, being manured with the hearts and brains of men! As if you were to raise your potatoes in the churchyard! Such is a model farm. +No, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. Let our lakes receive as true names at least as the Icarian Sea, where "still the shore" a "brave attempt resounds." + +Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint's; Fair Haven, an expansion of Concord River, said to contain some seventy acres, is a mile southwest; and White Pond, of about forty acres, is a mile and a half beyond Fair Haven. This is my lake country. These, with Concord River, are my water privileges; and night and day, year in year out, they grind such grist as I carry to them. +Since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, and I myself have profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is White Pond;—a poor name from its commonness, whether derived from the remarkable purity of its waters or the color of its sands. In these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. They are so much alike that you would say they must be connected under ground. It has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the same hue. As at Walden, in sultry dog-day weather, looking down through the woods on some of its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection from the bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty bluish-green or glaucous color. Many years since I used to go there to collect the sand by cartloads, to make sandpaper with, and I have continued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it proposes to call it Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow Pine Lake, from the following circumstance. About fifteen years ago you could see the top of a pitch pine, of the kind called yellow pine hereabouts, though it is not a distinct species, projecting above the surface in deep water, many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by some that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive forest that formerly stood there. I find that even so long ago as 1792, in a "Topographical Description of the Town of Concord," by one of its citizens, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the author, after speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds, "In the middle of the latter may be seen, when the water is very low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the place where it now stands, although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the water; the top of this tree is broken off, and at that place measures fourteen inches in diameter." In the spring of '49 I talked with the man who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told me that it was he who got out this tree ten or fifteen years before. As near as he could remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was in the winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neighbors, he would take out the old yellow pine. He sawed a channel in the ice toward the shore, and hauled it over and along and out on to the ice with oxen; but, before he had gone far in his work, he was surprised to find that it was wrong end upward, with the stumps of the branches pointing down, and the small end firmly fastened in the sandy bottom. It was about a foot in diameter at the big end, and he had expected to get a good saw-log, but it was so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if for that. He had some of it in his shed then. There were marks of an axe and of woodpeckers on the butt. He thought that it might have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown over into the pond, and after the top had become water-logged, while the butt-end was still dry and light, had drifted out and sunk wrong end up. His father, eighty years old, could not remember when it was not there. Several pretty large logs may still be seen lying on the bottom, where, owing to the undulation of the surface, they look like huge water snakes in motion. +This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the white lily, which requires mud, or the common sweet flag, the blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows thinly in the pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shore, where it is visited by hummingbirds in June; and the color both of its bluish blades and its flowers and especially their reflections, is in singular harmony with the glaucous water. +White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmer's door, in which his ducks swim! Hither the clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth. + + +Baker Farm + +Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or to the cedar wood beyond Flint's Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit; or to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white spruce trees, and toadstools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red alderberry glows like eyes of imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds, and the wild holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on a hilltop; such as the black birch, of which we have some handsome specimens two feet in diameter; its cousin, the yellow birch, with its loose golden vest, perfumed like the first; the beech, which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted, perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered specimens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the township, supposed by some to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beechnuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this wood; the bass; the hornbeam; the Celtis occidentalis, or false elm, of which we have but one well-grown; some taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst of the woods; and many others I could mention. These were the shrines I visited both summer and winter. +Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and life. As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them, that it was only natives that were so distinguished. Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo a resplendent light appeared over the shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was in Italy or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon to which I have referred, which is especially observed in the morning, but also at other times, and even by moonlight. Though a constant one, it is not commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagination like Cellini's, it would be basis enough for superstition. Beside, he tells us that he showed it to very few. But are they not indeed distinguished who are conscious that they are regarded at all? + +I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair Haven, through the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of the Baker Farm, that retreat of which a poet has since sung, beginning,— + "Thy entry is a pleasant field, + Which some mossy fruit trees yield + Partly to a ruddy brook, + By gliding musquash undertook, + And mercurial trout, + Darting about." +I thought of living there before I went to Walden. I "hooked" the apples, leaped the brook, and scared the musquash and the trout. It was one of those afternoons which seem indefinitely long before one, in which many events may happen, a large portion of our natural life, though it was already half spent when I started. By the way there came up a shower, which compelled me to stand half an hour under a pine, piling boughs over my head, and wearing my handkerchief for a shed; and when at length I had made one cast over the pickerelweed, standing up to my middle in water, I found myself suddenly in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder began to rumble with such emphasis that I could do no more than listen to it. The gods must be proud, thought I, with such forked flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. So I made haste for shelter to the nearest hut, which stood half a mile from any road, but so much the nearer to the pond, and had long been uninhabited:— + "And here a poet builded, + In the completed years, + For behold a trivial cabin + That to destruction steers." +So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and several children, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father at his work, and now came running by his side from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its father's knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was the last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the world, instead of John Field's poor starveling brat. There we sat together under that part of the roof which leaked the least, while it showered and thundered without. I had sat there many times of old before the ship was built that floated his family to America. An honest, hard-working, but shiftless man plainly was John Field; and his wife, she too was brave to cook so many successive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove; with round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to improve her condition one day; with the never absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere. The chickens, which had also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room like members of the family, too humanized, methought, to roast well. They stood and looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile my host told me his story, how hard he worked "bogging" for a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre and the use of the land with manure for one year, and his little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father's side the while, not knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his system—and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he had rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things. For I purposely talked to him as if he were a philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves. A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture. But alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he might think that I was dressed like a gentleman (which, however, was not the case), and in an hour or two, without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough money to support me a week. If he and his family would live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms a-kimbo, and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail;—thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage—living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic, and failing so. +"Do you ever fish?" I asked. "Oh yes, I catch a mess now and then when I am lying by; good perch I catch."—"What's your bait?" "I catch shiners with fishworms, and bait the perch with them." "You'd better go now, John," said his wife, with glistening and hopeful face; but John demurred. +The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern woods promised a fair evening; so I took my departure. When I had got without I asked for a drink, hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to complete my survey of the premises; but there, alas! are shallows and quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket irrecoverable. Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected, water was seemingly distilled, and after consultation and long delay passed out to the thirsty one—not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent, I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish in such cases when manners are concerned. +As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain, bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catch pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog-holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and college; but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed air, from I know not what quarter, my Good Genius seemed to say—Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day—farther and wider—and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which will never become English bay. Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers' crops? That is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs. +O Baker Farm! + "Landscape where the richest element + Is a little sunshine innocent."... + + "No one runs to revel + On thy rail-fenced lea."... + + "Debate with no man hast thou, + With questions art never perplexed, + As tame at the first sight as now, + In thy plain russet gabardine dressed."... + + "Come ye who love, + And ye who hate, + Children of the Holy Dove, + And Guy Faux of the state, + And hang conspiracies + From the tough rafters of the trees!" +Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows, morning and evening, reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character. +Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting go "bogging" ere this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair string, and he said it was his luck; but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field!—I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it—thinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this primitive new country—to catch perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels. + + +Higher Laws + +As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience. +They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements, because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not play so many games as they do in England, for here the more primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society. +Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes—remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education—make them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness—hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who + "yave not of the text a pulled hen + That saith that hunters ben not holy men." +There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the "best men," as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual phil-anthropic distinctions. +Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect. In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd. I have been surprised to consider that the only obvious employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole half-day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or children of the town, with just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did not think that they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. They might go there a thousand times before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all the while. The Governor and his Council faintly remember the pond, for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; but now they are too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it no more forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be used there; but they know nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development. +I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect. I have tried it again and again. I have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which revives from time to time, but always when I have done I feel that it would have been better if I had not fished. I think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are the first streaks of morning. There is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation; yet with every year I am less a fisherman, though without more humanity or even wisdom; at present I am no fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. Beside, there is something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and I began to see where housework commences, and whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appearance each day, to keep the house sweet and free from all ill odors and sights. Having been my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually complete experience. The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth. Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a significant fact, stated by entomologists—I find it in Kirby and Spence—that "some insects in their perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them"; and they lay it down as "a general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less than in that of larvæ. The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly... and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly" content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly still represents the larva. This is the tidbit which tempts his insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them. +It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way—as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn—and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized. +If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. +Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not because I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to "the time of distress." +Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no share? I have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside had fed my genius. "The soul not being mistress of herself," says Thseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and one does not know the savor of food." He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for sardines from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and I, can live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking. +Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. In the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universe's Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our lives. +We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. "That in which men differ from brute beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully." Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.— + "How happy's he who hath due place assigned + To his beasts and disafforested his mind! + . . . . . . . + Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast, + And is not ass himself to all the rest! + Else man not only is the herd of swine, + But he's those devils too which did incline + Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse." +All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely. +I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject—I care not how obscene my words are—but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles. +Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. +John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day's work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to re-create his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him—Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.—But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect. + + +Brute Neighbors + +Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the village to my house from the other side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating of it. +Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern these three hours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts—no flutter from them. Was that a farmer's noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now? The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so? He that does not eat need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who would live there where a body can never think for the barking of Bose? And oh, the housekeeping! to keep bright the devil's door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! Better not keep a house. Say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tapping. Oh, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; they are born too far into life for me. I have water from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf.—Hark! I hear a rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs and sweetbriers tremble.—Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the world to-day? +Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That's the greatest thing I have seen to-day. There's nothing like it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands—unless when we were off the coast of Spain. That's a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten to-day, that I might go a-fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned. Come, let's along. +Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait meanwhile. Angleworms are rarely to be met with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen; and this you may have all to yourself today. I would advise you to set in the spade down yonder among the ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort waving. I think that I may warrant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the squares of the distances. +Hermit alone. Let me see; where was I? Methinks I was nearly in this frame of mind; the world lay about at this angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? If I should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as near being resolved into the essence of things as ever I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will not come back to me. If it would do any good, I would whistle for them. When they make us an offer, is it wise to say, We will think of it? My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find the path again. What was it that I was thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I will just try these three sentences of Confut-see; they may fetch that state about again. I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is but one opportunity of a kind. +Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just thirteen whole ones, beside several which are imperfect or undersized; but they will do for the smaller fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. Those village worms are quite too large; a shiner may make a meal off one without finding the skewer. +Hermit. Well, then, let's be off. Shall we to the Concord? There's good sport there if the water be not too high. + +Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts. +The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away. +A phœbe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. The traveller does not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's call which gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens. +It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live here! He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her young, who would already have taken up their march, with faint, wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the soft white pines over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. +I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar—for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red—he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick—"Fire! for God's sake fire!"—and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least. +I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door. +Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "Æneas Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "this action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity." A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden. The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. +Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks' holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its denizens;—now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a "winged cat" in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it was a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her "wings," which I keep still. There is no appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it was part flying squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. This would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse? +In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain. +As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before. He manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and that, he cooly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout—though Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the splash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning—perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface. +For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do. + + +House-Warming + +In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food. There, too, I admired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York; destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature there. So butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. The barberry's brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes merely; but I collected a small store of wild apples for coddling, which the proprietor and travellers had overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe I laid up half a bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that season to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln—they now sleep their long sleep under the railroad—with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burs with in my hand, for I did not always wait for the frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the burs which they had selected were sure to contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and shook the trees. They grew also behind my house, and one large tree, which almost overshadowed it, was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming in flocks early in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burs before they fell, I relinquished these trees to them and visited the more distant woods composed wholly of chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute for bread. Many other substitutes might, perhaps, be found. Digging one day for fishworms, I discovered the ground-nut (Apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had not dreamed it. I had often since seen its crumpled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same. Cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish taste, much like that of a frost-bitten potato, and I found it better boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at some future period. In these days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it; and when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string of nuts may be represented on our works of art. +Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their color told! And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls. +The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in October, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows within and on the walls overhead, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, but I did not trouble myself much to get rid of them; I even felt complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter. They never molested me seriously, though they bedded with me; and they gradually disappeared, into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and unspeakable cold. +Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter quarters in November, I used to resort to the northeast side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left. + +When I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. My bricks, being second-hand ones, required to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old, and was said to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which men love to repeat whether they are true or not. Such sayings themselves grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would take many blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them. Many of the villages of Mesopotamia are built of second-hand bricks of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on them is older and probably harder still. However that may be, I was struck by the peculiar toughness of the steel which bore so many violent blows without being worn out. As my bricks had been in a chimney before, though I did not read the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out as many fireplace bricks as I could find, to save work and waste, and I filled the spaces between the bricks about the fireplace with stones from the pond shore, and also made my mortar with the white sand from the same place. I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house. Indeed, I worked so deliberately, that though I commenced at the ground in the morning, a course of bricks raised a few inches above the floor served for my pillow at night; yet I did not get a stiff neck for it that I remember; my stiff neck is of older date. I took a poet to board for a fortnight about those times, which caused me to be put to it for room. He brought his own knife, though I had two, and we used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth. He shared with me the labors of cooking. I was pleased to see my work rising so square and solid by degrees, and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated to endure a long time. The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent. This was toward the end of summer. It was now November. + +The north wind had already begun to cool the pond, though it took many weeks of steady blowing to accomplish it, it is so deep. When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards. Yet I passed some cheerful evenings in that cool and airy apartment, surrounded by the rough brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high overhead. My house never pleased my eye so much after it was plastered, though I was obliged to confess that it was more comfortable. Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. I had got a couple of old fire-dogs to keep the wood from the hearth, and it did me good to see the soot form on the back of the chimney which I had built, and I poked the fire with more right and more satisfaction than usual. My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. +I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head—useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one. +It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly. As if only the savage dwelt near enough to Nature and Truth to borrow a trope from them. How can the scholar, who dwells away in the North West Territory or the Isle of Man, tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen? +However, only one or two of my guests were ever bold enough to stay and eat a hasty-pudding with me; but when they saw that crisis approaching they beat a hasty retreat rather, as if it would shake the house to its foundations. Nevertheless, it stood through a great many hasty-puddings. +I did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I brought over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyance which would have tempted me to go much farther if necessary. My house had in the meanwhile been shingled down to the ground on every side. In lathing I was pleased to be able to send home each nail with a single blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly. I remembered the story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine clothes, was wont to lounge about the village once, giving advice to workmen. Venturing one day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized a plasterer's board, and having loaded his trowel without mishap, with a complacent look toward the lathing overhead, made a bold gesture thitherward; and straightway, to his complete discomfiture, received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. I admired anew the economy and convenience of plastering, which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a handsome finish, and I learned the various casualties to which the plasterer is liable. I was surprised to see how thirsty the bricks were which drank up all the moisture in my plaster before I had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water it takes to christen a new hearth. I had the previous winter made a small quantity of lime by burning the shells of the Unio fluviatilis, which our river affords, for the sake of the experiment; so that I knew where my materials came from. I might have got good limestone within a mile or two and burned it myself, if I had cared to do so. + +The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before the general freezing. The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth then. There are many furrows in the sand where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks; and, for wrecks, it is strewn with the cases of caddis-worms made of minute grains of white quartz. Perhaps these have creased it, for you find some of their cases in the furrows, though they are deep and broad for them to make. But the ice itself is the object of most interest, though you must improve the earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine it closely the morning after it freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are against its under surface, and that more are continually rising from the bottom; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and dark, that is, you see the water through it. These bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face reflected in them through the ice. There may be thirty or forty of them to a square inch. There are also already within the ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex upward; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles one directly above another, like a string of beads. But these within the ice are not so numerous nor obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to cast on stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which broke through carried in air with them, which formed very large and conspicuous white bubbles beneath. One day when I came to the same place forty-eight hours afterward, I found that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by the seam in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had been very warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, but opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly stronger than before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run together, and lost their regularity; they were no longer one directly over another, but often like silvery coins poured from a bag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. Being curious to know what position my great bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cake containing a middling sized one, and turned it bottom upward. The new ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was included between the two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice, but close against the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches in diameter; and I was surprised to find that directly under the bubble the ice was melted with great regularity in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there between the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition had burst out downward, and probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were a foot in diameter. I inferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles which I had first seen against the under surface of the ice were now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like a burning-glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it. These are the little air-guns which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop. + +At length the winter set in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to do so till then. Night after night the geese came lumbering in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight in Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward Fair Haven, bound for Mexico. Several times, when returning from the village at ten or eleven o'clock at night, I heard the tread of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off. In 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of the 22d of December, Flint's and other shallower ponds and the river having been frozen ten days or more; in '46, the 16th; in '49, about the 31st; and in '50, about the 27th of December; in '52, the 5th of January; in '53, the 31st of December. The snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god Terminus. How much more interesting an event is that man's supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, steal, the fuel to cook it with! His bread and meat are sweet. There are enough fagots and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and, some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. There was also the driftwood of the pond. In the course of the summer I had discovered a raft of pitch pine logs with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish when the railroad was built. This I hauled up partly on the shore. After soaking two years and then lying high six months it was perfectly sound, though waterlogged past drying. I amused myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on the ice; or I tied several logs together with a birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a hook at the end, dragged them across. Though completely waterlogged and almost as heavy as lead, they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire; nay, I thought that they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by the water, burned longer, as in a lamp. +Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, says that "the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest," were "considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under the name of purprestures, as tending ad terrorem ferarum—ad nocumentum forestae, etc.," to the frightening of the game and the detriment of the forest. But I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the vert more than the hunters or woodchoppers, and as much as though I had been the Lord Warden himself; and if any part was burned, though I burned it myself by accident, I grieved with a grief that lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that of the proprietors; nay, I grieved when it was cut down by the proprietors themselves. I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and children, etc. +It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty years ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia "nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains." In this town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the woodchopper. It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them. +Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to get the village blacksmith to "jump" it; but I jumped him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, made it do. If it was dull, it was at least hung true. +A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is interesting to remember how much of this food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous years I had often gone prospecting over some bare hillside, where a pitch pine wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. They are almost indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel you explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the earth. But commonly I kindled my fire with the dry leaves of the forest, which I had stored up in my shed before the snow came. Green hickory finely split makes the woodchopper's kindlings, when he has a camp in the woods. Once in a while I got a little of this. When the villagers were lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that I was awake.— + Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, + Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, + Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, + Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; + Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form + Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; + By night star-veiling, and by day + Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; + Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, + And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. +Hard green wood just cut, though I used but little of that, answered my purpose better than any other. I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in a winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire that lived there; and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy. One day, however, as I was splitting wood, I thought that I would just look in at the window and see if the house was not on fire; it was the only time I remember to have been particularly anxious on this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had caught my bed, and I went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place as big as my hand. But my house occupied so sunny and sheltered a position, and its roof was so low, that I could afford to let the fire go out in the middle of almost any winter day. +The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them. Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts. Though, when I had been exposed to the rudest blasts a long time, my whole body began to grow torpid, when I reached the genial atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my faculties and prolonged my life. But the most luxuriously housed has little to boast of in this respect, nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate how the human race may be at last destroyed. It would be easy to cut their threads any time with a little sharper blast from the north. We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe. +The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for economy, since I did not own the forest; but it did not keep fire so well as the open fireplace. Cooking was then, for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic process. It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian fashion. The stove not only took up room and scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if I had lost a companion. You can always see a face in the fire. The laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day. But I could no longer sit and look into the fire, and the pertinent words of a poet recurred to me with new force.— + "Never, bright flame, may be denied to me + Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. + What but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright? + What but my fortunes sunk so low in night? + Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, + Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all? + Was thy existence then too fanciful + For our life's common light, who are so dull? + Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold + With our congenial souls? secrets too bold? + + Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit + Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, + Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire + Warms feet and hands—nor does to more aspire; + By whose compact utilitarian heap + The present may sit down and go to sleep, + Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, + And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked." + + +Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors + +I weathered some merry snow-storms, and spent some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirled wildly without, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. For many weeks I met no one in my walks but those who came occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village. The elements, however, abetted me in making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when I had once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so not only made a my bed for my feet, but in the night their dark line was my guide. For human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods. Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now. In some places, within my own remembrance, the pines would scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and children who were compelled to go this way to Lincoln alone and on foot did it with fear, and often ran a good part of the distance. Though mainly but a humble route to neighboring villages, or for the woodman's team, it once amused the traveller more than now by its variety, and lingered longer in his memory. Where now firm open fields stretch from the village to the woods, it then ran through a maple swamp on a foundation of logs, the remnants of which, doubtless, still underlie the present dusty highway, from the Stratton, now the Alms-House Farm, to Brister's Hill. +East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, who built his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;—Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. Cato's half-obliterated cellar-hole still remains, though known to few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It is now filled with the smooth sumach (Rhus glabra), and one of the earliest species of goldenrod (Solidago stricta) grows there luxuriantly. +Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town, Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, where she spun linen for the townsfolk, making the Walden Woods ring with her shrill singing, for she had a loud and notable voice. At length, in the war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers, prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and hens were all burned up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself over her gurgling pot—"Ye are all bones, bones!" I have seen bricks amid the oak copse there. +Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister's Hill, lived Brister Freeman, "a handy Negro," slave of Squire Cummings once—there where grow still the apple trees which Brister planted and tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord—where he is styled "Sippio Brister"—Scipio Africanus he had some title to be called—"a man of color," as if he were discolored. It also told me, with staring emphasis, when he died; which was but an indirect way of informing me that he ever lived. With him dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly—large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since. +Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratton family; whose orchard once covered all the slope of Brister's Hill, but was long since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty village tree. +Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed's location, on the other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground famous for the pranks of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part in our New England life, and deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have his biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family—New-England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious tradition says that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered the traveller's beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and went their ways again. +Breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over Davenant's "Gondibert," that winter that I labored with a lethargy—which, by the way, I never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to read Chalmers' collection of English poetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods—we who had run to fires before—barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. "It's Baker's barn," cried one. "It is the Codman place," affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted "Concord to the rescue!" Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure; and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, including Bascom's shop, and, between ourselves, we thought that, were we there in season with our "tub," and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief—returned to sleep and "Gondibert." But as for "Gondibert," I would except that passage in the preface about wit being the soul's powder—"but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder." +It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered the only survivor of the family that I know, the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been working far off in the river meadows all day, and had improved the first moments that he could call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides and points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones, where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. The house being gone, he looked at what there was left. He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence implied, and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had been fastened to the heavy end—all that he could now cling to—to convince me that it was no common "rider." I felt it, and still remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family. +Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln. +Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthenware, and left descendants to succeed him. Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes, and "attached a chip," for form's sake, as I have read in his accounts, there being nothing else that he could lay his hands on. One day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, a man who was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the younger. He had long ago bought a potter's wheel of him, and wished to know what had become of him. I had read of the potter's clay and wheel in Scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use were not such as had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and I was pleased to hear that so fictile an art was ever practiced in my neighborhood. +The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name with coil enough), who occupied Wyman's tenement—Col. Quoil, he was called. Rumor said that he had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he had lived I should have made him fight his battles over again. His trade here was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods. All I know of him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like one who had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you could well attend to. He wore a greatcoat in midsummer, being affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of carmine. He died in the road at the foot of Brister's Hill shortly after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades avoided it as "an unlucky castle," I visited it. There lay his old clothes curled up by use, as if they were himself, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at the fountain. The last could never have been the symbol of his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had heard of Brister's Spring, he had never seen it; and soiled cards, kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts, were scattered over the floor. One black chicken which the administrator could not catch, black as night and as silent, not even croaking, awaiting Reynard, still went to roost in the next apartment. In the rear there was the dim outline of a garden, which had been planted but had never received its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking fits, though it was now harvest time. It was overrun with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which last stuck to my clothes for all fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy of his last Waterloo; but no warm cap or mittens would he want more. +Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and strawberries, raspberries, thimble-berries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny sward there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black birch, perhaps, waves where the door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible, where once a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it was covered deep—not to be discovered till some late day—with a flat stone under the sod, when the last of the race departed. What a sorrowful act must that be—the covering up of wells! coincident with the opening of wells of tears. These cellar dents, like deserted fox burrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were the stir and bustle of human life, and "fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," in some form and dialect or other were by turns discussed. But all I can learn of their conclusions amounts to just this, that "Cato and Brister pulled wool"; which is about as edifying as the history of more famous schools of philosophy. +Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, in front-yard plots—now standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests;—the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half-century after they had grown up and died—blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors. +But this small village, germ of something more, why did it fail while Concord keeps its ground? Were there no natural advantages—no water privileges, forsooth? Ay, the deep Walden Pond and cool Brister's Spring—privilege to drink long and healthy draughts at these, all unimproved by these men but to dilute their glass. They were universally a thirsty race. Might not the basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, linen-spinning, and pottery business have thrived here, making the wilderness to blossom like the rose, and a numerous posterity have inherited the land of their fathers? The sterile soil would at least have been proof against a low-land degeneracy. Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! Again, perhaps, Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my house raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet. +I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed. With such reminiscences I repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep. + +At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said to have survived for a long time buried in drifts, even without food; or like that early settler's family in the town of Sutton, in this State, whose cottage was completely covered by the great snow of 1717 when he was absent, and an Indian found it only by the hole which the chimney's breath made in the drift, and so relieved the family. But no friendly Indian concerned himself about me; nor needed he, for the master of the house was at home. The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of! When the farmers could not get to the woods and swamps with their teams, and were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their houses, and, when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in the swamps, ten feet from the ground, as it appeared the next spring. +In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly the same number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracks—to such routine the winter reduces us—yet often they were filled with heaven's own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the show was nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head at every step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters. One afternoon I amused myself by watching a barred owl (Strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he would stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit left between their lids, by which he preserved a peninsular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way, as it were, with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace await the dawning of his day. +As I walked over the long causeway made for the railroad through the meadows, I encountered many a blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer play; and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek, heathen as I was, I turned to it the other also. Nor was it much better by the carriage road from Brister's Hill. For I came to town still, like a friendly Indian, when the contents of the broad open fields were all piled up between the walls of the Walden road, and half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last traveller. And when I returned new drifts would have formed, through which I floundered, where the busy northwest wind had been depositing the powdery snow round a sharp angle in the road, and not a rabbit's track, nor even the fine print, the small type, of a meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed to find, even in midwinter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited the return of spring. +Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned from my walk at evening I crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper leading from my door, and found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my house filled with the odor of his pipe. Or on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social "crack"; one of the few of his vocation who are "men on their farms"; who donned a frock instead of a professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about large fires in cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty. +The one who came from farthest to my lodge, through deepest snows and most dismal tempests, was a poet. A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. We made that small house ring with boisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of much sober talk, making amends then to Walden vale for the long silences. Broadway was still and deserted in comparison. At suitable intervals there were regular salutes of laughter, which might have been referred indifferently to the last-uttered or the forth-coming jest. We made many a "bran new" theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness which philosophy requires. +I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers—Connecticut gave him to the world—he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares, his brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But though comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will come to him for advice. + "How blind that cannot see serenity!" +A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men's bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments. With his hospitable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep a caravansary on the world's highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed, "Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road." He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him. +Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter! to converse with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment. Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of—we three—it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds' weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak;—but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked. +There was one other with whom I had "solid seasons," long to be remembered, at his house in the village, and who looked in upon me from time to time; but I had no more for society there. +There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, "The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest." I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the town. + + +Winter Animals + +When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's Pond, after it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing no house between my own hut and the lecture room. In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets. There, far from the village street, and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling with icicles. +For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it was making it. I seldom opened my door in a winter evening without hearing it; Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo, sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables accented somewhat like how der do; or sometimes hoo, hoo only. One night in the beginning of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine o'clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings like a tempest in the woods as they flew low over my house. They passed over the pond toward Fair Haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their commodore honking all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable cat-owl from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of Concord horizon. What do you mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have not got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had a discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as these plains never saw nor heard. +I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide. +Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow-crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated. +Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the winter I threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow-crust by my door, and was amused by watching the motions of the various animals which were baited by it. In the twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily through the shrub oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were eyed on him—for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl—wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance—I never saw one walk—and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time—for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect. At length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one, considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to put it through at any rate;—a singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow;—and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various directions. +At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were heard long before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of a mile off, and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too big for their throats and chokes them; and after great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them; but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were taking what was their own. +Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig and, placing them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A little flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be from the woodside. They were so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the nearest way. +When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and about my wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust, for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, "sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two." I used to start them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees. They will come regularly every evening to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is Nature's own bird which lives on buds and diet drink. +In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting-horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actæon. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he would run in a straight line away no foxhound could overtake him; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake everything else for this. One day a man came to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, "What do you do here?" He had lost a dog, but found a man. +One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood; and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and disappeared again in the woods. Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding nearer and nearer, now from Well Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the round, leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a moment compassion restrained the latter's arm; but that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece was levelled, and whang!—the fox, rolling over the rock, lay dead on the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds. Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock; but, spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased her hounding as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush a while, and at length turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston squire came to the Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week they had been hunting on their own account from Weston woods. The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the skin; but the other declined it and departed. He did not find his hounds that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a farmhouse for the night, whence, having been well fed, they took their departure early in the morning. +The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used to hunt bears on Fair Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in Concord village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose there. Nutting had a famous foxhound named Burgoyne—he pronounced it Bugine—which my informant used to borrow. In the "Wast Book" of an old trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-clerk, and representative, I find the following entry. Jan. 18th, 1742-3, "John Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0—2—3"; they are not now found here; and in his ledger, Feb, 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit "by 1/2 a Catt skin 0—1—4-1/2"; of course, a wild-cat, for Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war, and would not have got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit is given for deerskins also, and they were daily sold. One man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by the roadside and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me, than any hunting-horn. +At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed. +Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There were scores of pitch pines around my house, from one to four inches in diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the previous winter—a Norwegian winter for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with their other diet. These trees were alive and apparently flourishing at midsummer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completely girdled; but after another winter such were without exception dead. It is remarkable that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont to grow up densely. +The hares (Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. One had her form under my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and she startled me each morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir—thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the floor timbers in her hurry. They used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of the ground that they could hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my window. When I opened my door in the evening, off they would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself—the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus, levipes, light-foot, some think.) +What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves. The partridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerous than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does not support a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and around every swamp may be seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends. + + +The Pond in Winter + +After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what—how—when—where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether." +Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining-rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads. +Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial. They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less than they have done. The things which they practice are said not yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew where she had retreated. How, pray, did he get these in midwinter? Oh, he got worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caught them. His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him. The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisher-man swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled. +When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted. He would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you walked half way round the pond. +Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here—that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven. + +As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in '46, with compass and chain and sounding line. There have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. Some who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which a load of hay might be driven," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. Others have gone down from the village with a "fifty-six" and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom; for while the "fifty-six" was resting by the way, they were paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for marvellousness. But I can assure my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual, depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which may be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless. +A factory-owner, hearing what depth I had found, thought that it could not be true, for, judging from his acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so steep an angle. But the deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their area as most suppose, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys. They are not like cups between the hills; for this one, which is so unusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical section through its centre not deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth," and about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, observes, "If we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have appeared! + "So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low + Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, + Capacious bed of waters." +But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we apply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have seen, appears already in a vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will appear four times as shallow. So much for the increased horrors of the chasm of Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a "horrid chasm," from which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain have been necessary to conceal their history. But it is easiest, as they who work on the highways know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower. The amount of it is, the imagination give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with its breadth. +As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect of water under these circumstances is to level all inequalities. The regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the shores and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite across the pond, and its direction could be determined by observing the opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel. +When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an inch, and put down the soundings, more than a hundred in all, I observed this remarkable coincidence. Having noticed that the number indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the centre of the map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth, notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the outline of the pond far from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were got by measuring into the coves; and I said to myself, Who knows but this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle? Is not this the rule also for the height of mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? We know that a hill is not highest at its narrowest part. +Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within the land not only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin or independent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has its bar at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider compared with its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared with that in the basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of the cove, and the character of the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements enough to make out a formula for all cases. +In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this experience, at the deepest point in a pond, by observing the outlines of a surface and the character of its shores alone, I made a plan of White Pond, which contains about forty-one acres, and, like this, has no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet; and as the line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth, where two opposite capes approached each other and two opposite bays receded, I ventured to mark a point a short distance from the latter line, but still on the line of greatest length, as the deepest. The deepest part was found to be within one hundred feet of this, still farther in the direction to which I had inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of course, a stream running through, or an island in the pond, would make the problem much more complicated. +If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness. +What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man's particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth in him. But a low and smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a corresponding depth of thought. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclination; each is our harbor for a season, in which we are detained and partially land-locked. These inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is gradually increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of the waters, so that it reaches to the surface, that which was at first but an inclination in the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures its own conditions—changes, perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a marsh. At the advent of each individual into this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them. +As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for where the water flows into the pond it will probably be coldest in summer and warmest in winter. When the ice-men were at work here in '46-7, the cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected by those who were stacking them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by side with the rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the ice over a small space was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which made them think that there was an inlet there. They also showed me in another place what they thought was a "leach-hole," through which the pond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing me out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under ten feet of water; but I think that I can warrant the pond not to need soldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has suggested, that if such a "leach-hole" should be found, its connection with the meadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying some colored powder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow, which would catch some of the particles carried through by the current. +While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen inches thick, undulated under a slight wind like water. It is well known that a level cannot be used on ice. At one rod from the shore its greatest fluctuation, when observed by means of a level on land directed toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. It was probably greater in the middle. Who knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth? When two legs of my level were on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across the pond. When I began to cut holes for sounding there were three or four inches of water on the ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the water began immediately to run into these holes, and continued to run for two days in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every side, and contributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface of the pond; for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated the ice. This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship to let the water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider's web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre. Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside. + +While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically, wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January—wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next. He cuts and saws the solid pond, unroofs the house of fishes, and carts off their very element and air, held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood, through the favoring winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer there. It looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is drawn through the streets. These ice-cutters are a merry race, full of jest and sport, and when I went among them they were wont to invite me to saw pit-fashion with them, I standing underneath. +In the winter of '46-7 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many carloads of ungainly-looking farming tools—sleds, plows, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not described in the New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, which, as I understood, amounted to half a million already; but in order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter. They went to work at once, plowing, barrowing, rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on making this a model farm; but when I was looking sharp to see what kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water—for it was a very springy soil—indeed all the terra firma there was—and haul it away on sleds, and then I guessed that they must be cutting peat in a bog. So they came and went every day, with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to some point of the polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a flock of arctic snow-birds. But sometimes Squaw Walden had her revenge, and a hired man, walking behind his team, slipped through a crack in the ground down toward Tartarus, and he who was so brave before suddenly became but the ninth part of a man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was glad to take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there was some virtue in a stove; or sometimes the frozen soil took a piece of steel out of a plowshare, or a plow got set in the furrow and had to be cut out. +To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers, came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided it into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told me that in a good day they could get out a thousand tons, which was the yield of about one acre. Deep ruts and "cradle-holes" were worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the passage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses invariably ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets. They stacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay between the outside layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, though never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavities, leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and finally topple it down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort or Valhalla; but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the crevices, and this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked like a venerable moss-grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted marble, the abode of Winter, that old man we see in the almanac—his shanty, as if he had a design to estivate with us. They calculated that not twenty-five per cent of this would reach its destination, and that two or three per cent would be wasted in the cars. However, a still greater part of this heap had a different destiny from what was intended; for, either because the ice was found not to keep so well as was expected, containing more air than usual, or for some other reason, it never got to market. This heap, made in the winter of '46-7 and estimated to contain ten thousand tons, was finally covered with hay and boards; and though it was unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off, the rest remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next winter, and was not quite melted till September, 1848. Thus the pond recovered the greater part. +Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers. I have noticed that a portion of Walden which in the state of water was green will often, when frozen, appear from the same point of view blue. So the hollows about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled with a greenish water somewhat like its own, but the next day will have frozen blue. Perhaps the blue color of water and ice is due to the light and air they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect. +Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac; and as often as I looked out I was reminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in the waves, where lately a hundred men securely labored. +Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names. + + +Spring + +The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new garment to take the place of the old. This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that of '52-3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint's Pond and Fair Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days' duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32°, or freezing point; near the shore at 33°; in the middle of Flint's Pond, the same day, at 32½°; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36°. This difference of three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several inches thinner than in the middle. In midwinter the middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. So, also, every one who has waded about the shores of the pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near the bottom. In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot or "comb," that is, assume the appearance of honeycomb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right angles with what was the water surface. Where there is a rock or a log rising near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected heat; and I have been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within the ice operate as burning-glasses to melt the ice beneath. +The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a cold night, February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint's Pond to spend the day, I noticed with surprise, that when I struck the ice with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods around, or as if I had struck on a tight drum-head. The pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun's rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomed once more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. In the right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity. But in the middle of the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been stunned by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is all alive and covered with papillae. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. +One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the Spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honeycombed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April; in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23d of March; in '54, about the 7th of April. +Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth. One old man, who has been a close observer of Nature, and seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her keel—who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire more of natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah—told me—and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of Nature's operations, for I thought that there were no secrets between them—that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. There was ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone out of the river, and he dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to Fair Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he was surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice was melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely that some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand and impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard, gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up in haste and excited; but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore—at first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height before it came to a standstill. +At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off. +Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard's paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their semi-cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as they are more moist, till they form an almost flat sand, still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted into banks, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple marks on the bottom. +The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank—for the sun acts on one side first—and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me—had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (γεἱβω, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; λοβὁς, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words); externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed), with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of waterplants have impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils. +When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again into a myriad of others. You here see perchance how blood-vessels are formed. If you look closely you observe that first there pushes forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel. Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, Umbilicaria, on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip—labium, from labor (?)—laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther. +Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver, lights, and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling-clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter. +Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces. +When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter—life-everlasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and other strong-stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds—decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it brings back the summer to our winter memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to types already in the mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style, older than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer. +At the approach of spring the red squirrels got under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; and when I stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No, you don't—chickaree—chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible. +The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh hawk, sailing low over the meadow, is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire—"et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata"—as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame;—the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year's hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass-blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. +Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore,—olit, olit, olit,—chip, chip, chip, che char,—che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore—a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said. +The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked out the window, and lo! where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in a summer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more—the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig. This at least is not the Turdus migratorius. The pitch pines and shrub oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew that it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from Southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods. +In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. A "plump" of ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins. +For a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature. +As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.— + "Eurus ad Auroram Nabathaeaque regna recessit, + Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis." + + "The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathæn kingdom, + And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays. + . . . . . . . + Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things, + The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed; + Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high + Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven." +A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors—why the judge does not dismis his case—why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all. +"A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled. In like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again from developing themselves and destroys them. +"After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and natural sentiments of man?" + "The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger + Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude. + Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read + On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear + The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger. + Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended + To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world, + And mortals knew no shores but their own. + . . . . . . . + There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm + Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed." +On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the under side of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. The Merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for its name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the universe—sporting there alone—and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens? The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag;—or was its native nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow's trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry now some cliffy cloud. +Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy victory, then? +Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp—tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped. +Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hillsides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood thrush long before. The phœbe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrelful. This is the "sulphur showers" we hear of. Even in Calidas' drama of Sacontala, we read of "rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus." And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass. +Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847. + + +Conclusion + +To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buckeye does not grow in New England, and the mockingbird is rarely heard here. The wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than our views of it. +Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one's self.— + "Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find + A thousand regions in your mind + Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be + Expert in home-cosmography." +What does Africa—what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes—with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone. + "Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. + Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae." + + Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. + I have more of God, they more of the road. +It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct, a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too. +It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one's self in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society." He declared that "a soldier who fights in the ranks does not require half so much courage as a footpad"—"that honor and religion have never stood in the way of a well-considered and a firm resolve." This was manly, as the world goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A saner man would have found himself often enough "in formal opposition" to what are deemed "the most sacred laws of society," through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have tested his resolution without going out of his way. It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such. +I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. +I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. +It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so. As if that were important, and there were not enough to understand you without them. As if Nature could support but one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, and hush and whoa, which Bright can understand, were the best English. As if there were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! it depends on how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time. I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? In view of the future or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in front, our outlines dim and misty on that side; as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures. +Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough. "They pretend," as I hear, "that the verses of Kabir have four different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas"; but in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man's writings admit of more than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally? +I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found with my pages on this score than was found with the Walden ice. Southern customers objected to its blue color, which is the evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white, but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond. +Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. +Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not? +There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a staff. Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance because he could not overcome him. Before he had found a stock in all respects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick. Before he had given it the proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the time he had smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere he had put on the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I stay to mention these things? When the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair proportions; in which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places. And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. The material was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful? +No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infinity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten. +However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: "From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo! creation widens to our view." We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. +I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr.——of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me—not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less—not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commerce to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller's horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, "I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom." "So it has," answered the latter, "but you have not got half way to it yet." So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction—a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. +Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the vintage; but I thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and grounds and "entertainment" pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him. +How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue. "Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never die"—that is, as long as we can remember them. The learned societies and great men of Assyria—where are they? What youthful philosophers and experimentalists we are! There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole human life. These may be but the spring months in the life of the race. If we have had the seven-years' itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect. +There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground? The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine. +The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts—from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb—heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board—may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! +I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. + + +ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE + +I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. +This American government—what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads. +But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. +After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?—in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts—a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be,— + "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, + As his corpse to the rampart we hurried; + Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot + O'er the grave where our hero we buried." +The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office to his dust at least:— + "I am too high-born to be propertied, + To be a secondary at control, + Or useful serving-man and instrument + To any sovereign state throughout the world." +He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist. +How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also. +All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of '75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army. +Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the "Duty of Submission to Civil Government," resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say that "so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of God... that the established government be obeyed, and no longer.... This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other." Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people. +In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does any one think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis? + "A drab of state, a cloth-o'-silver slut, + To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt." +Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it. +All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote. +I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. Oh for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow—one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the almshouses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund for the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in short ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently. +It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico;—see if I would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made. +The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves—the union between themselves and the State—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State, that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union, which have prevented them from resisting the State? +How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle—the perception and the performance of right—changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine. +Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels? +One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate, penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who placed him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again. +If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn. +As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way; its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is an change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body. +I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. +I meet this American government, or its representative, the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year—no more—in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with—for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel—and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he shall treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action? I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name—if ten honest men only—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the State's ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question of human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister—though at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a quarrel with her—the Legislature would not wholly waive the subject the following winter. +Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her—the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now. +I have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather than the seizure of his goods—though both will serve the same purpose—because they who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property. To such the State renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man—not to make any invidious comparison—is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. "Show me the tribute-money," said he;—and one took a penny out of his pocket;—if you use money which has the image of Cæsar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Cæsar's government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it; "Render therefore to Cæsar that which is Cæsar's, and to God those things which are God's"—leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know. +When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences to their property and families of disobedience to it. For my own part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State. But, if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably in outward respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said, "If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame." No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case. +Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the Church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. "Pay," it said, "or be locked up in the jail." I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster: for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax-bill, and have the State to back its demand, as well as the Church. However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing:—"Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined." This I gave to the town clerk; and he has it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original presumption that time. If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list. +I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it. +Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to have this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man. +The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the doorway, when I entered. But the jailer said, "Come, boys, it is time to lock up"; and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer as "a first-rate fellow and a clever man." When the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in the town. He naturally wanted to know where I came from, and what brought me there; and, when I had told him, I asked him in my turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of course; and, as the world goes, I believe he was. "Why," said he, "they accuse me of burning a barn; but I never did it." As near as I could discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was burnt. He had the reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three months waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer; but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated. +He occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw that if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out the window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various occupants of that room; for I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them. +I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should never see him again; but at length he showed me which was my bed, and left me to blow out the lamp. +It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town-clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village-inn—a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about. +In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they called for the vessels again, I was green enough to return what bread I had left; but my comrade seized it, and said that I should lay that up for lunch or dinner. Soon after he was let out to work at haying in a neighboring field, whither he went every day, and would not be back till noon; so he bade me good-day, saying that he doubted if he should see me again. +When I came out of prison—for some one interfered, and paid that tax—I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a youth and emerged a tottering and gray-headed man; and yet a change had to my eyes come over the scene—the town, and State, and country—greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that in their sacrifices to humanity, they ran no risks, not even to their property; that after all they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that many of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village. +It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, "How do ye do?" My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour—for the horse was soon tackled—was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen. +This is the whole history of "My Prisons." + +I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one with—the dollar is innocent—but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases. +If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the State, they do but what they have already done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the State requires. If they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save his property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere with the public good. +This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too much on his guard in such a case, lest his action be biased by obstinacy or an undue regard for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour. +I think sometimes, Why, this people mean well; they are only ignorant; they would do better if they knew how: why give your neighbors this pain to treat you as they are not inclined to? But I think, again, This is no reason why I should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much greater pain of a different kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself, When many millions of men, without heat, without ill-will, without personal feeling of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their constitution, of retracting or altering their present demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to any other millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force? You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. You do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts. +I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity. + "We must affect our country as our parents, + And if at any time we alienate + Our love or industry from doing it honor, + We must respect effects and teach the soul + Matter of conscience and religion, + And not desire of rule or benefit." +I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better a patriot than my fellow-countrymen. Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all? +However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him. +I know that most men think differently from myself; but those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred subjects, content me as little as any. Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind's range and hospitality. Yet, compared with the cheap professions of most reformers, and the still cheaper wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only sensible and valuable words, and we thank Heaven for him. Comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still, his quality is not wisdom, but prudence. The lawyer's truth is not truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. He well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows to be given by him but defensive ones. He is not a leader, but a follower. His leaders are the men of '87. "I have never made an effort," he says, "and never propose to make an effort; I have never countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which the various States came into the Union." Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, "Because it was a part of the original compact—let it stand." Notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations, and behold it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellect—what, for instance, it behooves a man to do here in America to-day with regard to slavery, but ventures, or is driven, to make some such desperate answer as the following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a private man—from which what new and singular code of social duties might be inferred? "The manner," says he, "in which the governments of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it is for their own consideration, under their responsibility to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it. They have never received any encouragement from me, and they never will." +They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head. +No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufacturers and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation? +The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well—is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen. diff --git a/Text/Zarathustra.txt b/Text/Zarathustra.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6065574 --- /dev/null +++ b/Text/Zarathustra.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13149 @@ +When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of +his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and +solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart +changed,--and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the +sun, and spake thus unto it: + +Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for +whom thou shinest! + +For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou wouldst have +wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine +eagle, and my serpent. + +But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine overflow and +blessed thee for it. + +Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much +honey; I need hands outstretched to take it. + +I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become +joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches. + +Therefore must I descend into the deep: as thou doest in the +evening, when thou goest behind the sea, and givest light also to the +nether-world, thou exuberant star! + +Like thee must I GO DOWN, as men say, to whom I shall descend. + +Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest +happiness without envy! + +Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden +out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss! + +Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again +going to be a man. + +Thus began Zarathustra's down-going. + +2. + +Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no one meeting him. When he +entered the forest, however, there suddenly stood before him an old man, +who had left his holy cot to seek roots. And thus spake the old man to +Zarathustra: + +"No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago passed he by. +Zarathustra he was called; but he hath altered. + +Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the mountains: wilt thou now carry +thy fire into the valleys? Fearest thou not the incendiary's doom? + +Yea, I recognise Zarathustra. Pure is his eye, and no loathing lurketh +about his mouth. Goeth he not along like a dancer? + +Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an awakened one +is Zarathustra: what wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers? + +As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne thee up. +Alas, wilt thou now go ashore? Alas, wilt thou again drag thy body +thyself?" + +Zarathustra answered: "I love mankind." + +"Why," said the saint, "did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it +not because I loved men far too well? + +Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. +Love to man would be fatal to me." + +Zarathustra answered: "What spake I of love! I am bringing gifts unto +men." + +"Give them nothing," said the saint. "Take rather part of their load, +and carry it along with them--that will be most agreeable unto them: if +only it be agreeable unto thee! + +If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them no more than an alms, +and let them also beg for it!" + +"No," replied Zarathustra, "I give no alms. I am not poor enough for +that." + +The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake thus: "Then see to it that +they accept thy treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and do +not believe that we come with gifts. + +The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And +just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before +sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief? + +Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not +be like me--a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?" + +"And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra. + +The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I +laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. + +With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is +my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?" + +When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said: +"What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take +aught away from thee!"--And thus they parted from one another, the old +man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys. + +When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be +possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that +GOD IS DEAD!" + +3. + +When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoineth the forest, +he found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been +announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra +spake thus unto the people: + +I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What +have ye done to surpass man? + +All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye +want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the +beast than surpass man? + +What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the +same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. + +Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still +worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of +the apes. + +Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and +phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants? + +Lo, I teach you the Superman! + +The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The +Superman SHALL BE the meaning of the earth! + +I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not +those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, +whether they know it or not. + +Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, +of whom the earth is weary: so away with them! + +Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, +and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the +dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the +meaning of the earth! + +Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt +was the supreme thing:--the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and +famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. + +Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was +the delight of that soul! + +But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about +your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched +self-complacency? + +Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a +polluted stream without becoming impure. + +Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great +contempt be submerged. + +What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great +contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto +you, and so also your reason and virtue. + +The hour when ye say: "What good is my happiness! It is poverty and +pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify +existence itself!" + +The hour when ye say: "What good is my reason! Doth it long for +knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and +wretched self-complacency!" + +The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made +me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty +and pollution and wretched self-complacency!" + +The hour when ye say: "What good is my justice! I do not see that I am +fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!" + +The hour when ye say: "What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on +which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion." + +Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had +heard you crying thus! + +It is not your sin--it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto +heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven! + +Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy +with which ye should be inoculated? + +Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!-- + +When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out: "We have +now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see him!" +And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the rope-dancer, who +thought the words applied to him, began his performance. + +4. + +Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spake +thus: + +Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over +an abyss. + +A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a +dangerous trembling and halting. + +What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is +lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING. + +I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they +are the over-goers. + +I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and +arrows of longing for the other shore. + +I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going +down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that +the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive. + +I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in +order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own +down-going. + +I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for +the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus +seeketh he his own down-going. + +I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, +and an arrow of longing. + +I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to +be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the +bridge. + +I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for +the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more. + +I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a +virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling +to. + +I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give +back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself. + +I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then +asketh: "Am I a dishonest player?"--for he is willing to succumb. + +I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and +always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going. + +I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: +for he is willing to succumb through the present ones. + +I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he +must succumb through the wrath of his God. + +I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb +through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge. + +I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all +things are in him: thus all things become his down-going. + +I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his +head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his +down-going. + +I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark +cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, +and succumb as heralds. + +Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: +the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.-- + +5. + +When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people, +and was silent. "There they stand," said he to his heart; "there they +laugh: they understand me not; I am not the mouth for these ears. + +Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their +eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do +they only believe the stammerer? + +They have something whereof they are proud. What do they call it, that +which maketh them proud? Culture, they call it; it distinguisheth them +from the goatherds. + +They dislike, therefore, to hear of 'contempt' of themselves. So I will +appeal to their pride. + +I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is +THE LAST MAN!" + +And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people: + +It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ +of his highest hope. + +Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be +poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow +thereon. + +Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of +his longing beyond man--and the string of his bow will have unlearned to +whizz! + +I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing +star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you. + +Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any +star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no +longer despise himself. + +Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN. + +"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?"--so +asketh the last man and blinketh. + +The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man +who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of +the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest. + +"We have discovered happiness"--say the last men, and blink thereby. + +They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need +warmth. One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for +one needeth warmth. + +Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk +warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men! + +A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much +poison at last for a pleasant death. + +One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the +pastime should hurt one. + +One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still +wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome. + +No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wanteth the same; every one is +equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse. + +"Formerly all the world was insane,"--say the subtlest of them, and +blink thereby. + +They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is +no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon +reconciled--otherwise it spoileth their stomachs. + +They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures +for the night, but they have a regard for health. + +"We have discovered happiness,"--say the last men, and blink thereby.-- + +And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also +called "The Prologue": for at this point the shouting and mirth of the +multitude interrupted him. "Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,"--they +called out--"make us into these last men! Then will we make thee a +present of the Superman!" And all the people exulted and smacked their +lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart: + +"They understand me not: I am not the mouth for these ears. + +Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; too much have I +hearkened unto the brooks and trees: now do I speak unto them as unto +the goatherds. + +Calm is my soul, and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they +think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests. + +And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me +too. There is ice in their laughter." + +6. + +Then, however, something happened which made every mouth mute and every +eye fixed. In the meantime, of course, the rope-dancer had commenced his +performance: he had come out at a little door, and was going along the +rope which was stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the +market-place and the people. When he was just midway across, the little +door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon +sprang out, and went rapidly after the first one. "Go on, halt-foot," +cried his frightful voice, "go on, lazy-bones, interloper, +sallow-face!--lest I tickle thee with my heel! What dost thou here +between the towers? In the tower is the place for thee, thou shouldst be +locked up; to one better than thyself thou blockest the way!"--And with +every word he came nearer and nearer the first one. When, however, he +was but a step behind, there happened the frightful thing which made +every mouth mute and every eye fixed--he uttered a yell like a devil, +and jumped over the other who was in his way. The latter, however, when +he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at the same time his head and his +footing on the rope; he threw his pole away, and shot downwards faster +than it, like an eddy of arms and legs, into the depth. The market-place +and the people were like the sea when the storm cometh on: they all flew +apart and in disorder, especially where the body was about to fall. + +Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the +body, badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while +consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra +kneeling beside him. "What art thou doing there?" said he at last, "I +knew long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he draggeth me to +hell: wilt thou prevent him?" + +"On mine honour, my friend," answered Zarathustra, "there is nothing of +all that whereof thou speakest: there is no devil and no hell. Thy soul +will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear, therefore, nothing any +more!" + +The man looked up distrustfully. "If thou speakest the truth," said he, +"I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal +which hath been taught to dance by blows and scanty fare." + +"Not at all," said Zarathustra, "thou hast made danger thy calling; +therein there is nothing contemptible. Now thou perishest by thy +calling: therefore will I bury thee with mine own hands." + +When Zarathustra had said this the dying one did not reply further; but +he moved his hand as if he sought the hand of Zarathustra in gratitude. + +7. + +Meanwhile the evening came on, and the market-place veiled itself in +gloom. Then the people dispersed, for even curiosity and terror become +fatigued. Zarathustra, however, still sat beside the dead man on the +ground, absorbed in thought: so he forgot the time. But at last it +became night, and a cold wind blew upon the lonely one. Then arose +Zarathustra and said to his heart: + +Verily, a fine catch of fish hath Zarathustra made to-day! It is not a +man he hath caught, but a corpse. + +Sombre is human life, and as yet without meaning: a buffoon may be +fateful to it. + +I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, +the lightning out of the dark cloud--man. + +But still am I far from them, and my sense speaketh not unto their +sense. To men I am still something between a fool and a corpse. + +Gloomy is the night, gloomy are the ways of Zarathustra. Come, thou cold +and stiff companion! I carry thee to the place where I shall bury thee +with mine own hands. + +8. + +When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he put the corpse upon his +shoulders and set out on his way. Yet had he not gone a hundred steps, +when there stole a man up to him and whispered in his ear--and lo! +he that spake was the buffoon from the tower. "Leave this town, O +Zarathustra," said he, "there are too many here who hate thee. The +good and just hate thee, and call thee their enemy and despiser; the +believers in the orthodox belief hate thee, and call thee a danger to +the multitude. It was thy good fortune to be laughed at: and verily thou +spakest like a buffoon. It was thy good fortune to associate with the +dead dog; by so humiliating thyself thou hast saved thy life to-day. +Depart, however, from this town,--or tomorrow I shall jump over thee, +a living man over a dead one." And when he had said this, the buffoon +vanished; Zarathustra, however, went on through the dark streets. + +At the gate of the town the grave-diggers met him: they shone their +torch on his face, and, recognising Zarathustra, they sorely derided +him. "Zarathustra is carrying away the dead dog: a fine thing that +Zarathustra hath turned a grave-digger! For our hands are too cleanly +for that roast. Will Zarathustra steal the bite from the devil? Well +then, good luck to the repast! If only the devil is not a better thief +than Zarathustra!--he will steal them both, he will eat them both!" And +they laughed among themselves, and put their heads together. + +Zarathustra made no answer thereto, but went on his way. When he had +gone on for two hours, past forests and swamps, he had heard too much of +the hungry howling of the wolves, and he himself became a-hungry. So he +halted at a lonely house in which a light was burning. + +"Hunger attacketh me," said Zarathustra, "like a robber. Among forests +and swamps my hunger attacketh me, and late in the night. + +"Strange humours hath my hunger. Often it cometh to me only after a +repast, and all day it hath failed to come: where hath it been?" + +And thereupon Zarathustra knocked at the door of the house. An old man +appeared, who carried a light, and asked: "Who cometh unto me and my bad +sleep?" + +"A living man and a dead one," said Zarathustra. "Give me something to +eat and drink, I forgot it during the day. He that feedeth the hungry +refresheth his own soul, saith wisdom." + +The old man withdrew, but came back immediately and offered Zarathustra +bread and wine. "A bad country for the hungry," said he; "that is why +I live here. Animal and man come unto me, the anchorite. But bid thy +companion eat and drink also, he is wearier than thou." Zarathustra +answered: "My companion is dead; I shall hardly be able to persuade him +to eat." "That doth not concern me," said the old man sullenly; "he +that knocketh at my door must take what I offer him. Eat, and fare ye +well!"-- + +Thereafter Zarathustra again went on for two hours, trusting to the path +and the light of the stars: for he was an experienced night-walker, and +liked to look into the face of all that slept. When the morning dawned, +however, Zarathustra found himself in a thick forest, and no path was +any longer visible. He then put the dead man in a hollow tree at his +head--for he wanted to protect him from the wolves--and laid himself +down on the ground and moss. And immediately he fell asleep, tired in +body, but with a tranquil soul. + +9. + +Long slept Zarathustra; and not only the rosy dawn passed over his head, +but also the morning. At last, however, his eyes opened, and amazedly he +gazed into the forest and the stillness, amazedly he gazed into himself. +Then he arose quickly, like a seafarer who all at once seeth the land; +and he shouted for joy: for he saw a new truth. And he spake thus to his +heart: + +A light hath dawned upon me: I need companions--living ones; not dead +companions and corpses, which I carry with me where I will. + +But I need living companions, who will follow me because they want to +follow themselves--and to the place where I will. + +A light hath dawned upon me. Not to the people is Zarathustra to speak, +but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be the herd's herdsman and +hound! + +To allure many from the herd--for that purpose have I come. The people +and the herd must be angry with me: a robber shall Zarathustra be called +by the herdsmen. + +Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the good and just. Herdsmen, I +say, but they call themselves the believers in the orthodox belief. + +Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up +their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker:--he, however, is +the creator. + +Behold the believers of all beliefs! Whom do they hate most? Him who +breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker--he, +however, is the creator. + +Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses--and not herds or believers +either. Fellow-creators the creator seeketh--those who grave new values +on new tables. + +Companions, the creator seeketh, and fellow-reapers: for everything is +ripe for the harvest with him. But he lacketh the hundred sickles: so he +plucketh the ears of corn and is vexed. + +Companions, the creator seeketh, and such as know how to whet their +sickles. Destroyers, will they be called, and despisers of good and +evil. But they are the reapers and rejoicers. + +Fellow-creators, Zarathustra seeketh; fellow-reapers and +fellow-rejoicers, Zarathustra seeketh: what hath he to do with herds and +herdsmen and corpses! + +And thou, my first companion, rest in peace! Well have I buried thee in +thy hollow tree; well have I hid thee from the wolves. + +But I part from thee; the time hath arrived. 'Twixt rosy dawn and rosy +dawn there came unto me a new truth. + +I am not to be a herdsman, I am not to be a grave-digger. Not any more +will I discourse unto the people; for the last time have I spoken unto +the dead. + +With the creators, the reapers, and the rejoicers will I associate: the +rainbow will I show them, and all the stairs to the Superman. + +To the lone-dwellers will I sing my song, and to the twain-dwellers; +and unto him who hath still ears for the unheard, will I make the heart +heavy with my happiness. + +I make for my goal, I follow my course; over the loitering and tardy +will I leap. Thus let my on-going be their down-going! + +10. + +This had Zarathustra said to his heart when the sun stood at noon-tide. +Then he looked inquiringly aloft,--for he heard above him the sharp call +of a bird. And behold! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, +and on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend: for it +kept itself coiled round the eagle's neck. + +"They are mine animals," said Zarathustra, and rejoiced in his heart. + +"The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the +sun,--they have come out to reconnoitre. + +They want to know whether Zarathustra still liveth. Verily, do I still +live? + +More dangerous have I found it among men than among animals; in +dangerous paths goeth Zarathustra. Let mine animals lead me! + +When Zarathustra had said this, he remembered the words of the saint in +the forest. Then he sighed and spake thus to his heart: + +"Would that I were wiser! Would that I were wise from the very heart, +like my serpent! + +But I am asking the impossible. Therefore do I ask my pride to go always +with my wisdom! + +And if my wisdom should some day forsake me:--alas! it loveth to fly +away!--may my pride then fly with my folly!" + +Thus began Zarathustra's down-going. + + + + +ZARATHUSTRA'S DISCOURSES. + + + + +I. THE THREE METAMORPHOSES. + +Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit +becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. + +Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing +spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest +longeth its strength. + +What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down +like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden. + +What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, +that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength. + +Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one's pride? To +exhibit one's folly in order to mock at one's wisdom? + +Or is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph? To +ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter? + +Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the +sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul? + +Or is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of +the deaf, who never hear thy requests? + +Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and +not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads? + +Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one's hand to the +phantom when it is going to frighten us? + +All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: +and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so +hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness. + +But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here +the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its +own wilderness. + +Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its +last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon. + +What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call +Lord and God? "Thou-shalt," is the great dragon called. But the spirit +of the lion saith, "I will." + +"Thou-shalt," lieth in its path, sparkling with gold--a scale-covered +beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, "Thou shalt!" + +The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and +thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: "All the values of +things--glitter on me. + +All values have already been created, and all created values--do I +represent. Verily, there shall be no 'I will' any more. Thus speaketh +the dragon. + +My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why +sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent? + +To create new values--that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to +create itself freedom for new creating--that can the might of the lion +do. + +To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, +my brethren, there is need of the lion. + +To assume the right to new values--that is the most formidable +assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a +spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey. + +As its holiest, it once loved "Thou-shalt": now is it forced to find +illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may +capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture. + +But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion +could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child? + +Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a +self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea. + +Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea +unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth +the world's outcast. + +Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the +spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is +called The Pied Cow. + + + + +II. THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE. + +People commended unto Zarathustra a wise man, as one who could discourse +well about sleep and virtue: greatly was he honoured and rewarded for +it, and all the youths sat before his chair. To him went Zarathustra, +and sat among the youths before his chair. And thus spake the wise man: + +Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And +to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night! + +Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly +through the night. Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; immodestly +he carrieth his horn. + +No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep +awake all day. + +Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome +weariness, and is poppy to the soul. + +Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is +bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled. + +Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth +during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry. + +Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy +stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night. + +Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep +well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? + +Shall I covet my neighbour's maidservant? All that would ill accord with +good sleep. + +And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: +to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time. + +That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about +thee, thou unhappy one! + +Peace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep. And peace also +with thy neighbour's devil! Otherwise it will haunt thee in the night. + +Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked +government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power like to +walk on crooked legs? + +He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me +the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep. + +Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. +But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure. + +A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come +and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep. + +Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed +are they, especially if one always give in to them. + +Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take I +good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned--sleep, the +lord of the virtues! + +But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus +ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten +overcomings? + +And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten +laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself? + +Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at +once--sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues. + +Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my +mouth, and it remaineth open. + +Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and +stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic +chair. + +But not much longer do I then stand: I already lie.-- + +When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: +for thereby had a light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to his heart: + +A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I believe he +knoweth well how to sleep. + +Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep is +contagious--even through a thick wall it is contagious. + +A magic resideth even in his academic chair. And not in vain did the +youths sit before the preacher of virtue. + +His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And verily, if +life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the +desirablest nonsense for me also. + +Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they +sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and +poppy-head virtues to promote it! + +To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep +without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. + +Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of +virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is past. And not +much longer do they stand: there they already lie. + +Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +III. BACKWORLDSMEN. + +Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all +backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world +then seem to me. + +The dream--and diction--of a God, did the world then seem to me; +coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one. + +Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou--coloured vapours did +they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away +from himself,--thereupon he created the world. + +Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering +and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world +once seem to me. + +This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's image +and imperfect image--an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:--thus +did the world once seem to me. + +Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all +backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth? + +Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human +madness, like all the Gods! + +A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own +ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not +unto me from the beyond! + +What happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I +carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for +myself. And lo! Thereupon the phantom WITHDREW from me! + +To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe +in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus +speak I to backworldsmen. + +Suffering was it, and impotence--that created all backworlds; and +the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer +experienceth. + +Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with +a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any +longer: that created all Gods and backworlds. + +Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body--it +groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls. + +Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the +earth--it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it. + +And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head--and +not with its head only--into "the other world." + +But that "other world" is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, +inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence +do not speak unto man, except as man. + +Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak. +Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved? + +Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most +uprightly of its being--this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is +the measure and value of things. + +And this most upright existence, the ego--it speaketh of the body, and +still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth +with broken wings. + +Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it +learneth, the more doth it find titles and honours for the body and the +earth. + +A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer +to thrust one's head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it +freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth! + +A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed +blindly, and to approve of it--and no longer to slink aside from it, +like the sick and perishing! + +The sick and perishing--it was they who despised the body and the earth, +and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even +those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth! + +From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for +them. Then they sighed: "O that there were heavenly paths by which to +steal into another existence and into happiness!" Then they contrived +for themselves their by-paths and bloody draughts! + +Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied +themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe +the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this +earth. + +Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly. Verily, he is not indignant +at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become +convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves! + +Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly +on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God; +but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears. + +Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and +languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the +latest of virtues, which is uprightness. + +Backward they always gaze toward dark ages: then, indeed, were delusion +and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness to God, +and doubt was sin. + +Too well do I know those godlike ones: they insist on being believed in, +and that doubt is sin. Too well, also, do I know what they themselves +most believe in. + +Verily, not in backworlds and redeeming blood-drops: but in the body +do they also believe most; and their own body is for them the +thing-in-itself. + +But it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they get out of their +skin. Therefore hearken they to the preachers of death, and themselves +preach backworlds. + +Hearken rather, my brethren, to the voice of the healthy body; it is a +more upright and pure voice. + +More uprightly and purely speaketh the healthy body, perfect and +square-built; and it speaketh of the meaning of the earth.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +IV. THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY. + +To the despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish them neither +to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own +bodies,--and thus be dumb. + +"Body am I, and soul"--so saith the child. And why should one not speak +like children? + +But the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: "Body am I entirely, and +nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body." + +The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a +peace, a flock and a shepherd. + +An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which +thou callest "spirit"--a little instrument and plaything of thy big +sagacity. + +"Ego," sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the greater +thing--in which thou art unwilling to believe--is thy body with its big +sagacity; it saith not "ego," but doeth it. + +What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end +in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are +the end of all things: so vain are they. + +Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there +is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it +hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit. + +Ever hearkeneth the Self, and seeketh; it compareth, mastereth, +conquereth, and destroyeth. It ruleth, and is also the ego's ruler. + +Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, +an unknown sage--it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy +body. + +There is more sagacity in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who then +knoweth why thy body requireth just thy best wisdom? + +Thy Self laugheth at thine ego, and its proud prancings. "What are these +prancings and flights of thought unto me?" it saith to itself. "A by-way +to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of +its notions." + +The Self saith unto the ego: "Feel pain!" And thereupon it suffereth, +and thinketh how it may put an end thereto--and for that very purpose it +IS MEANT to think. + +The Self saith unto the ego: "Feel pleasure!" Thereupon it rejoiceth, +and thinketh how it may ofttimes rejoice--and for that very purpose it +IS MEANT to think. + +To the despisers of the body will I speak a word. That they despise is +caused by their esteem. What is it that created esteeming and despising +and worth and will? + +The creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created +for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself spirit, as +a hand to its will. + +Even in your folly and despising ye each serve your Self, ye despisers +of the body. I tell you, your very Self wanteth to die, and turneth away +from life. + +No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:--create beyond +itself. That is what it desireth most; that is all its fervour. + +But it is now too late to do so:--so your Self wisheth to succumb, ye +despisers of the body. + +To succumb--so wisheth your Self; and therefore have ye become despisers +of the body. For ye can no longer create beyond yourselves. + +And therefore are ye now angry with life and with the earth. And +unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt. + +I go not your way, ye despisers of the body! Ye are no bridges for me to +the Superman!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +V. JOYS AND PASSIONS. + +My brother, when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own virtue, thou +hast it in common with no one. + +To be sure, thou wouldst call it by name and caress it; thou wouldst +pull its ears and amuse thyself with it. + +And lo! Then hast thou its name in common with the people, and hast +become one of the people and the herd with thy virtue! + +Better for thee to say: "Ineffable is it, and nameless, that which is +pain and sweetness to my soul, and also the hunger of my bowels." + +Let thy virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if thou +must speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer about it. + +Thus speak and stammer: "That is MY good, that do I love, thus doth it +please me entirely, thus only do _I_ desire the good. + +Not as the law of a God do I desire it, not as a human law or a human +need do I desire it; it is not to be a guide-post for me to superearths +and paradises. + +An earthly virtue is it which I love: little prudence is therein, and +the least everyday wisdom. + +But that bird built its nest beside me: therefore, I love and cherish +it--now sitteth it beside me on its golden eggs." + +Thus shouldst thou stammer, and praise thy virtue. + +Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only +thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions. + +Thou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those passions: then +became they thy virtues and joys. + +And though thou wert of the race of the hot-tempered, or of the +voluptuous, or of the fanatical, or the vindictive; + +All thy passions in the end became virtues, and all thy devils angels. + +Once hadst thou wild dogs in thy cellar: but they changed at last into +birds and charming songstresses. + +Out of thy poisons brewedst thou balsam for thyself; thy cow, +affliction, milkedst thou--now drinketh thou the sweet milk of her +udder. + +And nothing evil groweth in thee any longer, unless it be the evil that +groweth out of the conflict of thy virtues. + +My brother, if thou be fortunate, then wilt thou have one virtue and no +more: thus goest thou easier over the bridge. + +Illustrious is it to have many virtues, but a hard lot; and many a one +hath gone into the wilderness and killed himself, because he was weary +of being the battle and battlefield of virtues. + +My brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary, however, is the evil; +necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-biting among the +virtues. + +Lo! how each of thy virtues is covetous of the highest place; it wanteth +thy whole spirit to be ITS herald, it wanteth thy whole power, in wrath, +hatred, and love. + +Jealous is every virtue of the others, and a dreadful thing is jealousy. +Even virtues may succumb by jealousy. + +He whom the flame of jealousy encompasseth, turneth at last, like the +scorpion, the poisoned sting against himself. + +Ah! my brother, hast thou never seen a virtue backbite and stab itself? + +Man is something that hath to be surpassed: and therefore shalt thou +love thy virtues,--for thou wilt succumb by them.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +VI. THE PALE CRIMINAL. + +Ye do not mean to slay, ye judges and sacrificers, until the animal hath +bowed its head? Lo! the pale criminal hath bowed his head: out of his +eye speaketh the great contempt. + +"Mine ego is something which is to be surpassed: mine ego is to me the +great contempt of man": so speaketh it out of that eye. + +When he judged himself--that was his supreme moment; let not the exalted +one relapse again into his low estate! + +There is no salvation for him who thus suffereth from himself, unless it +be speedy death. + +Your slaying, ye judges, shall be pity, and not revenge; and in that ye +slay, see to it that ye yourselves justify life! + +It is not enough that ye should reconcile with him whom ye slay. Let +your sorrow be love to the Superman: thus will ye justify your own +survival! + +"Enemy" shall ye say but not "villain," "invalid" shall ye say but not +"wretch," "fool" shall ye say but not "sinner." + +And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in +thought, then would every one cry: "Away with the nastiness and the +virulent reptile!" + +But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another +thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll +between them. + +An idea made this pale man pale. Adequate was he for his deed when he +did it, but the idea of it, he could not endure when it was done. + +Evermore did he now see himself as the doer of one deed. Madness, I call +this: the exception reversed itself to the rule in him. + +The streak of chalk bewitcheth the hen; the stroke he struck bewitched +his weak reason. Madness AFTER the deed, I call this. + +Hearken, ye judges! There is another madness besides, and it is BEFORE +the deed. Ah! ye have not gone deep enough into this soul! + +Thus speaketh the red judge: "Why did this criminal commit murder? He +meant to rob." I tell you, however, that his soul wanted blood, not +booty: he thirsted for the happiness of the knife! + +But his weak reason understood not this madness, and it persuaded him. +"What matter about blood!" it said; "wishest thou not, at least, to make +booty thereby? Or take revenge?" + +And he hearkened unto his weak reason: like lead lay its words upon +him--thereupon he robbed when he murdered. He did not mean to be +ashamed of his madness. + +And now once more lieth the lead of his guilt upon him, and once more is +his weak reason so benumbed, so paralysed, and so dull. + +Could he only shake his head, then would his burden roll off; but who +shaketh that head? + +What is this man? A mass of diseases that reach out into the world +through the spirit; there they want to get their prey. + +What is this man? A coil of wild serpents that are seldom at peace among +themselves--so they go forth apart and seek prey in the world. + +Look at that poor body! What it suffered and craved, the poor soul +interpreted to itself--it interpreted it as murderous desire, and +eagerness for the happiness of the knife. + +Him who now turneth sick, the evil overtaketh which is now the evil: he +seeketh to cause pain with that which causeth him pain. But there have +been other ages, and another evil and good. + +Once was doubt evil, and the will to Self. Then the invalid became a +heretic or sorcerer; as heretic or sorcerer he suffered, and sought to +cause suffering. + +But this will not enter your ears; it hurteth your good people, ye tell +me. But what doth it matter to me about your good people! + +Many things in your good people cause me disgust, and verily, not their +evil. I would that they had a madness by which they succumbed, like this +pale criminal! + +Verily, I would that their madness were called truth, or fidelity, +or justice: but they have their virtue in order to live long, and in +wretched self-complacency. + +I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me may +grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +VII. READING AND WRITING. + +Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his +blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. + +It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading +idlers. + +He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another +century of readers--and spirit itself will stink. + +Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not +only writing but also thinking. + +Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh +populace. + +He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but +learnt by heart. + +In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that +route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those +spoken to should be big and tall. + +The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a +joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched. + +I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which +scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins--it wanteth to laugh. + +I no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which I see +beneath me, the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh--that is your +thunder-cloud. + +Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation; and I look downward because I +am exalted. + +Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? + +He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays +and tragic realities. + +Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive--so wisdom wisheth us; she +is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior. + +Ye tell me, "Life is hard to bear." But for what purpose should ye have +your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? + +Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of +us fine sumpter asses and assesses. + +What have we in common with the rose-bud, which trembleth because a drop +of dew hath formed upon it? + +It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we +are wont to love. + +There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some +method in madness. + +And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, +and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness. + +To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little sprites flit +about--that moveth Zarathustra to tears and songs. + +I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. + +And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, +solemn: he was the spirit of gravity--through him all things fall. + +Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit +of gravity! + +I learned to walk; since then have I let myself run. I learned to fly; +since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot. + +Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. Now +there danceth a God in me.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +VIII. THE TREE ON THE HILL. + +Zarathustra's eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as +he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called +"The Pied Cow," behold, there found he the youth sitting leaning against +a tree, and gazing with wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra +thereupon laid hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spake +thus: + +"If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to +do so. + +But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it as it listeth. +We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands." + +Thereupon the youth arose disconcerted, and said: "I hear Zarathustra, +and just now was I thinking of him!" Zarathustra answered: + +"Why art thou frightened on that account?--But it is the same with man +as with the tree. + +The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more +vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and +deep--into the evil." + +"Yea, into the evil!" cried the youth. "How is it possible that thou +hast discovered my soul?" + +Zarathustra smiled, and said: "Many a soul one will never discover, +unless one first invent it." + +"Yea, into the evil!" cried the youth once more. + +"Thou saidst the truth, Zarathustra. I trust myself no longer since I +sought to rise into the height, and nobody trusteth me any longer; how +doth that happen? + +I change too quickly: my to-day refuteth my yesterday. I often overleap +the steps when I clamber; for so doing, none of the steps pardons me. + +When aloft, I find myself always alone. No one speaketh unto me; the +frost of solitude maketh me tremble. What do I seek on the height? + +My contempt and my longing increase together; the higher I clamber, the +more do I despise him who clambereth. What doth he seek on the height? + +How ashamed I am of my clambering and stumbling! How I mock at my +violent panting! How I hate him who flieth! How tired I am on the +height!" + +Here the youth was silent. And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside +which they stood, and spake thus: + +"This tree standeth lonely here on the hills; it hath grown up high +above man and beast. + +And if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could understand it: +so high hath it grown. + +Now it waiteth and waiteth,--for what doth it wait? It dwelleth too +close to the seat of the clouds; it waiteth perhaps for the first +lightning?" + +When Zarathustra had said this, the youth called out with violent +gestures: "Yea, Zarathustra, thou speakest the truth. My destruction +I longed for, when I desired to be on the height, and thou art the +lightning for which I waited! Lo! what have I been since thou hast +appeared amongst us? It is mine envy of thee that hath destroyed +me!"--Thus spake the youth, and wept bitterly. Zarathustra, however, put +his arm about him, and led the youth away with him. + +And when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra began to speak +thus: + +It rendeth my heart. Better than thy words express it, thine eyes tell +me all thy danger. + +As yet thou art not free; thou still SEEKEST freedom. Too unslept hath +thy seeking made thee, and too wakeful. + +On the open height wouldst thou be; for the stars thirsteth thy soul. +But thy bad impulses also thirst for freedom. + +Thy wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when thy +spirit endeavoureth to open all prison doors. + +Still art thou a prisoner--it seemeth to me--who deviseth liberty +for himself: ah! sharp becometh the soul of such prisoners, but also +deceitful and wicked. + +To purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of the spirit. +Much of the prison and the mould still remaineth in him: pure hath his +eye still to become. + +Yea, I know thy danger. But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not +thy love and hope away! + +Noble thou feelest thyself still, and noble others also feel thee still, +though they bear thee a grudge and cast evil looks. Know this, that to +everybody a noble one standeth in the way. + +Also to the good, a noble one standeth in the way: and even when they +call him a good man, they want thereby to put him aside. + +The new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue. The old, wanteth +the good man, and that the old should be conserved. + +But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest +he should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer. + +Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. And then they +disparaged all high hopes. + +Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day +had hardly an aim. + +"Spirit is also voluptuousness,"--said they. Then broke the wings of +their spirit; and now it creepeth about, and defileth where it gnaweth. + +Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are they now. A +trouble and a terror is the hero to them. + +But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not away the hero in thy +soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +IX. THE PREACHERS OF DEATH. + +There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom +desistance from life must be preached. + +Full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the +many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life by the "life +eternal"! + +"The yellow ones": so are called the preachers of death, or "the black +ones." But I will show them unto you in other colours besides. + +There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of +prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their +lusts are self-laceration. + +They have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may they preach +desistance from life, and pass away themselves! + +There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when +they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation. + +They would fain be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let +us beware of awakening those dead ones, and of damaging those living +coffins! + +They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse--and immediately they +say: "Life is refuted!" + +But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of +existence. + +Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that +bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their teeth. + +Or else, they grasp at sweetmeats, and mock at their childishness +thereby: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their still +clinging to it. + +Their wisdom speaketh thus: "A fool, he who remaineth alive; but so far +are we fools! And that is the foolishest thing in life!" + +"Life is only suffering": so say others, and lie not. Then see to it +that YE cease! See to it that the life ceaseth which is only suffering! + +And let this be the teaching of your virtue: "Thou shalt slay thyself! +Thou shalt steal away from thyself!"-- + +"Lust is sin,"--so say some who preach death--"let us go apart and beget +no children!" + +"Giving birth is troublesome,"--say others--"why still give birth? One +beareth only the unfortunate!" And they also are preachers of death. + +"Pity is necessary,"--so saith a third party. "Take what I have! Take +what I am! So much less doth life bind me!" + +Were they consistently pitiful, then would they make their neighbours +sick of life. To be wicked--that would be their true goodness. + +But they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind others +still faster with their chains and gifts!-- + +And ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very +tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death? + +All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange--ye +put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is flight, and the will to +self-forgetfulness. + +If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the +momentary. But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you--nor +even for idling! + +Everywhere resoundeth the voices of those who preach death; and the +earth is full of those to whom death hath to be preached. + +Or "life eternal"; it is all the same to me--if only they pass away +quickly!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +X. WAR AND WARRIORS. + +By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either +whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth! + +My brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever, +your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the +truth! + +I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye are not great enough not +to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of +them! + +And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least +its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship. + +I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! "Uniform" one +calleth what they wear; may it not be uniform what they therewith hide! + +Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy--for YOUR enemy. And +with some of you there is hatred at first sight. + +Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of +your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall +still shout triumph thereby! + +Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars--and the short peace more +than the long. + +You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but +to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory! + +One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow; +otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth. Let your peace be a victory! + +Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it +is the good war which halloweth every cause. + +War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your +sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims. + +"What is good?" ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: +"To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching." + +They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the +bashfulness of your goodwill. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others +are ashamed of their ebb. + +Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the +mantle of the ugly! + +And when your soul becometh great, then doth it become haughty, and in +your sublimity there is wickedness. I know you. + +In wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet. But they +misunderstand one another. I know you. + +Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. +Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies +are also your successes. + +Resistance--that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction +be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying! + +To the good warrior soundeth "thou shalt" pleasanter than "I will." And +all that is dear unto you, ye shall first have it commanded unto you. + +Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest +hope be the highest thought of life! + +Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by +me--and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed. + +So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life! +What warrior wisheth to be spared! + +I spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren in war!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XI. THE NEW IDOL. + +Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my +brethren: here there are states. + +A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I +say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples. + +A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth +it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am the +people." + +It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith +and a love over them: thus they served life. + +Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: +they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them. + +Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but +hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs. + +This sign I give unto you: every people speaketh its language of good +and evil: this its neighbour understandeth not. Its language hath it +devised for itself in laws and customs. + +But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it +saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen. + +False is everything in it; with stolen teeth it biteth, the biting one. +False are even its bowels. + +Confusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give unto you as +the sign of the state. Verily, the will to death, indicateth this sign! +Verily, it beckoneth unto the preachers of death! + +Many too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the state devised! + +See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it +swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them! + +"On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating +finger of God"--thus roareth the monster. And not only the long-eared +and short-sighted fall upon their knees! + +Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! +Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves! + +Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye +became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol! + +Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new +idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,--the cold +monster! + +Everything will it give YOU, if YE worship it, the new idol: thus it +purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes. + +It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish +artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the +trappings of divine honours! + +Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as +life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death! + +The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the +bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the +state, where the slow suicide of all--is called "life." + +Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors +and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft--and +everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them! + +Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their +bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even +digest themselves. + +Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer +thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much +money--these impotent ones! + +See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and +thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss. + +Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness--as if happiness +sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne.--and ofttimes +also the throne on filth. + +Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly +smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, +these idolaters. + +My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! +Better break the windows and jump into the open air! + +Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the idolatry of the +superfluous! + +Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the steam of these +human sacrifices! + +Open still remaineth the earth for great souls. Empty are still many +sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which floateth the odour of +tranquil seas. + +Open still remaineth a free life for great souls. Verily, he who +possesseth little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate +poverty! + +There, where the state ceaseth--there only commenceth the man who is not +superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single +and irreplaceable melody. + +There, where the state CEASETH--pray look thither, my brethren! Do ye +not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XII. THE FLIES IN THE MARKET-PLACE. + +Flee, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with the noise +of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones. + +Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee. Resemble +again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-branched one--silently and +attentively it o'erhangeth the sea. + +Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the +market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great +actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies. + +In the world even the best things are worthless without those who +represent them: those representers, the people call great men. + +Little do the people understand what is great--that is to say, the +creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors +of great things. + +Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world:--invisibly it +revolveth. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such +is the course of things. + +Spirit, hath the actor, but little conscience of the spirit. He +believeth always in that wherewith he maketh believe most strongly--in +HIMSELF! + +Tomorrow he hath a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. Sharp +perceptions hath he, like the people, and changeable humours. + +To upset--that meaneth with him to prove. To drive mad--that meaneth +with him to convince. And blood is counted by him as the best of all +arguments. + +A truth which only glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and +trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in Gods that make a great noise in +the world! + +Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,--and the people glory +in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour. + +But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee +they want Yea or Nay. Alas! thou wouldst set thy chair betwixt For and +Against? + +On account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not jealous, thou +lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an absolute one. + +On account of those abrupt ones, return into thy security: only in the +market-place is one assailed by Yea? or Nay? + +Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait +until they know WHAT hath fallen into their depths. + +Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: +away from the market-Place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of +new values. + +Flee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over by the +poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth! + +Flee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the +pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Towards thee they have +nothing but vengeance. + +Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not +thy lot to be a fly-flap. + +Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud +structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin. + +Thou art not stone; but already hast thou become hollow by the numerous +drops. Thou wilt yet break and burst by the numerous drops. + +Exhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see thee, and torn +at a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even upbraid. + +Blood they would have from thee in all innocence; blood their bloodless +souls crave for--and they sting, therefore, in all innocence. + +But thou, profound one, thou sufferest too profoundly even from small +wounds; and ere thou hadst recovered, the same poison-worm crawled over +thy hand. + +Too proud art thou to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care lest it be +thy fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice! + +They buzz around thee also with their praise: obtrusiveness, is their +praise. They want to be close to thy skin and thy blood. + +They flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or devil; they whimper before +thee, as before a God or devil. What doth it come to! Flatterers are +they, and whimperers, and nothing more. + +Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones. But that +hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly. Yea! the cowardly are wise! + +They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls--thou art +always suspected by them! Whatever is much thought about is at last +thought suspicious. + +They punish thee for all thy virtues. They pardon thee in their inmost +hearts only--for thine errors. + +Because thou art gentle and of upright character, thou sayest: +"Blameless are they for their small existence." But their circumscribed +souls think: "Blamable is all great existence." + +Even when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel themselves +despised by thee; and they repay thy beneficence with secret +maleficence. + +Thy silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once +thou be humble enough to be frivolous. + +What we recognise in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on +your guard against the small ones! + +In thy presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleameth +and gloweth against thee in invisible vengeance. + +Sawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou approachedst them, +and how their energy left them like the smoke of an extinguishing fire? + +Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they +are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate thee, and would fain suck thy +blood. + +Thy neighbours will always be poisonous flies; what is great in +thee--that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more +fly-like. + +Flee, my friend, into thy solitude--and thither, where a rough strong +breeze bloweth. It is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XIII. CHASTITY. + +I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too +many of the lustful. + +Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the +dreams of a lustful woman? + +And just look at these men: their eye saith it--they know nothing better +on earth than to lie with a woman. + +Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath +still spirit in it! + +Would that ye were perfect--at least as animals! But to animals +belongeth innocence. + +Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in +your instincts. + +Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with +many almost a vice. + +These are continent, to be sure: but doggish lust looketh enviously out +of all that they do. + +Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit doth +this creature follow them, with its discord. + +And how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece +of flesh is denied it! + +Ye love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart? But I am distrustful +of your doggish lust. + +Ye have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the sufferers. +Hath not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of +fellow-suffering? + +And also this parable give I unto you: Not a few who meant to cast out +their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves. + +To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the +road to hell--to filth and lust of soul. + +Do I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for me to do. + +Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the +discerning one go unwillingly into its waters. + +Verily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler +of heart, and laugh better and oftener than you. + +They laugh also at chastity, and ask: "What is chastity? + +Is chastity not folly? But the folly came unto us, and not we unto it. + +We offered that guest harbour and heart: now it dwelleth with us--let it +stay as long as it will!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XIV. THE FRIEND. + +"One, is always too many about me"--thinketh the anchorite. "Always once +one--that maketh two in the long run!" + +I and me are always too earnestly in conversation: how could it be +endured, if there were not a friend? + +The friend of the anchorite is always the third one: the third one is +the cork which preventeth the conversation of the two sinking into the +depth. + +Ah! there are too many depths for all anchorites. Therefore, do they +long so much for a friend, and for his elevation. + +Our faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have faith in +ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. + +And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we +attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable. + +"Be at least mine enemy!"--thus speaketh the true reverence, which doth +not venture to solicit friendship. + +If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war +for him: and in order to wage war, one must be CAPABLE of being an +enemy. + +One ought still to honour the enemy in one's friend. Canst thou go nigh +unto thy friend, and not go over to him? + +In one's friend one shall have one's best enemy. Thou shalt be closest +unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him. + +Thou wouldst wear no raiment before thy friend? It is in honour of thy +friend that thou showest thyself to him as thou art? But he wisheth thee +to the devil on that account! + +He who maketh no secret of himself shocketh: so much reason have ye +to fear nakedness! Aye, if ye were Gods, ye could then be ashamed of +clothing! + +Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt +be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman. + +Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep--to know how he looketh? What is +usually the countenance of thy friend? It is thine own countenance, in a +coarse and imperfect mirror. + +Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep? Wert thou not dismayed at thy friend +looking so? O my friend, man is something that hath to be surpassed. + +In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master: not +everything must thou wish to see. Thy dream shall disclose unto thee +what thy friend doeth when awake. + +Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy friend wanteth pity. +Perhaps he loveth in thee the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity. + +Let thy pity for thy friend be hid under a hard shell; thou shalt bite +out a tooth upon it. Thus will it have delicacy and sweetness. + +Art thou pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to thy friend? +Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his +friend's emancipator. + +Art thou a slave? Then thou canst not be a friend. Art thou a tyrant? +Then thou canst not have friends. + +Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. +On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only +love. + +In woman's love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not +love. And even in woman's conscious love, there is still always surprise +and lightning and night, along with the light. + +As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats, and +birds. Or at the best, cows. + +As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, ye men, who of +you are capable of friendship? + +Oh! your poverty, ye men, and your sordidness of soul! As much as ye +give to your friend, will I give even to my foe, and will not have +become poorer thereby. + +There is comradeship: may there be friendship! + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XV. THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS. + +Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the +good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on +earth than good and bad. + +No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain +itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth. + +Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and +contempt by another: thus I found it. Much found I here called bad, +which was there decked with purple honours. + +Never did the one neighbour understand the other: ever did his soul +marvel at his neighbour's delusion and wickedness. + +A table of excellencies hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the table +of their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to Power. + +It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard +they call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique +and hardest of all,--they extol as holy. + +Whatever maketh them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy +of their neighbours, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the +test and the meaning of all else. + +Verily, my brother, if thou knewest but a people's need, its land, +its sky, and its neighbour, then wouldst thou divine the law of its +surmountings, and why it climbeth up that ladder to its hope. + +"Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others: no one +shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend"--that made the soul of a +Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness. + +"To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow"--so seemed it alike +pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name--the name which +is alike pleasing and hard to me. + +"To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their +will"--this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and +became powerful and permanent thereby. + +"To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and +blood, even in evil and dangerous courses"--teaching itself so, another +people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and +heavy with great hopes. + +Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, +they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice +from heaven. + +Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself--he +created only the significance of things, a human significance! +Therefore, calleth he himself "man," that is, the valuator. + +Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the +treasure and jewel of the valued things. + +Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of +existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones! + +Change of values--that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he +destroy who hath to be a creator. + +Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times +individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest +creation. + +Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule +and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables. + +Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as +long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only +saith: ego. + +Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in +the advantage of many--it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin. + +Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and +bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of +wrath. + +Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did +Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones--"good" +and "bad" are they called. + +Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye +brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter upon the +thousand necks of this animal? + +A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have +there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; +there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a goal. + +But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, +is there not also still lacking--humanity itself?-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XVI. NEIGHBOUR-LOVE. + +Ye crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it. But I say +unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves. + +Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a +virtue thereof: but I fathom your "unselfishness." + +The THOU is older than the _I_; the THOU hath been consecrated, but not +yet the _I_: so man presseth nigh unto his neighbour. + +Do I advise you to neighbour-love? Rather do I advise you to +neighbour-flight and to furthest love! + +Higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future +ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms. + +The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than +thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou +fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour. + +Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves +sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbour into love, and would +fain gild yourselves with his error. + +Would that ye could not endure it with any kind of near ones, or their +neighbours; then would ye have to create your friend and his overflowing +heart out of yourselves. + +Ye call in a witness when ye want to speak well of yourselves; and +when ye have misled him to think well of you, ye also think well of +yourselves. + +Not only doth he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowledge, but more +so, he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance. And thus speak ye +of yourselves in your intercourse, and belie your neighbour with +yourselves. + +Thus saith the fool: "Association with men spoileth the character, +especially when one hath none." + +The one goeth to his neighbour because he seeketh himself, and the other +because he would fain lose himself. Your bad love to yourselves maketh +solitude a prison to you. + +The furthest ones are they who pay for your love to the near ones; and +when there are but five of you together, a sixth must always die. + +I love not your festivals either: too many actors found I there, and +even the spectators often behaved like actors. + +Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the +festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman. + +I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how +to be a sponge, if one would be loved by overflowing hearts. + +I teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete, a capsule +of the good,--the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to +bestow. + +And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it together again +for him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of +purpose out of chance. + +Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy to-day; in thy +friend shalt thou love the Superman as thy motive. + +My brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love--I advise you to +furthest love!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XVII. THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE. + +Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way +unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me. + +"He who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong": so +say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd. + +The voice of the herd will still echo in thee. And when thou sayest, +"I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a +plaint and a pain. + +Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam +of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction. + +But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto +thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so! + +Art thou a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A +self-rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel stars to revolve around thee? + +Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many +convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not a lusting and +ambitious one! + +Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the +bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever. + +Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and +not that thou hast escaped from a yoke. + +Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away +his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude. + +Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, +shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT? + +Canst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will +as a law over thee? Canst thou be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy +law? + +Terrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one's own law. +Thus is a star projected into desert space, and into the icy breath of +aloneness. + +To-day sufferest thou still from the multitude, thou individual; to-day +hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes. + +But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield, +and thy courage quail. Thou wilt one day cry: "I am alone!" + +One day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too closely thy +lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as a phantom. Thou +wilt one day cry: "All is false!" + +There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not +succeed, then must they themselves die! But art thou capable of it--to +be a murderer? + +Hast thou ever known, my brother, the word "disdain"? And the anguish of +thy justice in being just to those that disdain thee? + +Thou forcest many to think differently about thee; that, charge they +heavily to thine account. Thou camest nigh unto them, and yet wentest +past: for that they never forgive thee. + +Thou goest beyond them: but the higher thou risest, the smaller doth the +eye of envy see thee. Most of all, however, is the flying one hated. + +"How could ye be just unto me!"--must thou say--"I choose your injustice +as my allotted portion." + +Injustice and filth cast they at the lonesome one: but, my brother, if +thou wouldst be a star, thou must shine for them none the less on that +account! + +And be on thy guard against the good and just! They would fain crucify +those who devise their own virtue--they hate the lonesome ones. + +Be on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity! All is unholy to it that +is not simple; fain, likewise, would it play with the fire--of the fagot +and stake. + +And be on thy guard, also, against the assaults of thy love! Too readily +doth the recluse reach his hand to any one who meeteth him. + +To many a one mayest thou not give thy hand, but only thy paw; and I +wish thy paw also to have claws. + +But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou +waylayest thyself in caverns and forests. + +Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and +thy seven devils leadeth thy way! + +A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a +fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain. + +Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou +become new if thou have not first become ashes! + +Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt +thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils! + +Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one: thou lovest +thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself, as only the loving +ones despise. + +To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth +he of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved! + +With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with thy +creating; and late only will justice limp after thee. + +With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love him who +seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XVIII. OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN. + +"Why stealest thou along so furtively in the twilight, Zarathustra? And +what hidest thou so carefully under thy mantle? + +Is it a treasure that hath been given thee? Or a child that hath been +born thee? Or goest thou thyself on a thief's errand, thou friend of the +evil?"-- + +Verily, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that hath been +given me: it is a little truth which I carry. + +But it is naughty, like a young child; and if I hold not its mouth, it +screameth too loudly. + +As I went on my way alone to-day, at the hour when the sun declineth, +there met me an old woman, and she spake thus unto my soul: + +"Much hath Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but never spake he unto +us concerning woman." + +And I answered her: "Concerning woman, one should only talk unto men." + +"Talk also unto me of woman," said she; "I am old enough to forget it +presently." + +And I obliged the old woman and spake thus unto her: + +Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one +solution--it is called pregnancy. + +Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is +woman for man? + +Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. +Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything. + +Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the +warrior: all else is folly. + +Too sweet fruits--these the warrior liketh not. Therefore liketh he +woman;--bitter is even the sweetest woman. + +Better than man doth woman understand children, but man is more childish +than woman. + +In the true man there is a child hidden: it wanteth to play. Up then, ye +women, and discover the child in man! + +A plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious stone, +illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come. + +Let the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say: "May I +bear the Superman!" + +In your love let there be valour! With your love shall ye assail him who +inspireth you with fear! + +In your love be your honour! Little doth woman understand otherwise +about honour. But let this be your honour: always to love more than ye +are loved, and never be the second. + +Let man fear woman when she loveth: then maketh she every sacrifice, and +everything else she regardeth as worthless. + +Let man fear woman when she hateth: for man in his innermost soul is +merely evil; woman, however, is mean. + +Whom hateth woman most?--Thus spake the iron to the loadstone: "I hate +thee most, because thou attractest, but art too weak to draw unto thee." + +The happiness of man is, "I will." The happiness of woman is, "He will." + +"Lo! now hath the world become perfect!"--thus thinketh every woman when +she obeyeth with all her love. + +Obey, must the woman, and find a depth for her surface. Surface, is +woman's soul, a mobile, stormy film on shallow water. + +Man's soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subterranean +caverns: woman surmiseth its force, but comprehendeth it not.-- + +Then answered me the old woman: "Many fine things hath Zarathustra said, +especially for those who are young enough for them. + +Strange! Zarathustra knoweth little about woman, and yet he is right +about them! Doth this happen, because with women nothing is impossible? + +And now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old enough for it! + +Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly, +the little truth." + +"Give me, woman, thy little truth!" said I. And thus spake the old +woman: + +"Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XIX. THE BITE OF THE ADDER. + +One day had Zarathustra fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing to the +heat, with his arms over his face. And there came an adder and bit him +in the neck, so that Zarathustra screamed with pain. When he had +taken his arm from his face he looked at the serpent; and then did it +recognise the eyes of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get +away. "Not at all," said Zarathustra, "as yet hast thou not received +my thanks! Thou hast awakened me in time; my journey is yet long." +"Thy journey is short," said the adder sadly; "my poison is fatal." +Zarathustra smiled. "When did ever a dragon die of a serpent's +poison?"--said he. "But take thy poison back! Thou art not rich enough +to present it to me." Then fell the adder again on his neck, and licked +his wound. + +When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked him: +"And what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of thy story?" And Zarathustra +answered them thus: + +The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story is +immoral. + +When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for +that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you. + +And rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are cursed, it +pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless. Rather curse a +little also! + +And should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five small ones +besides. Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice presseth alone. + +Did ye ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And he who can +bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself! + +A small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all. And if the punishment +be not also a right and an honour to the transgressor, I do not like +your punishing. + +Nobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one's right, +especially if one be in the right. Only, one must be rich enough to do +so. + +I do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there +always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel. + +Tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes? + +Devise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punishment, but +also all guilt! + +Devise me, then, the justice which acquitteth every one except the +judge! + +And would ye hear this likewise? To him who seeketh to be just from the +heart, even the lie becometh philanthropy. + +But how could I be just from the heart! How can I give every one his +own! Let this be enough for me: I give unto every one mine own. + +Finally, my brethren, guard against doing wrong to any anchorite. How +could an anchorite forget! How could he requite! + +Like a deep well is an anchorite. Easy is it to throw in a stone: if +it should sink to the bottom, however, tell me, who will bring it out +again? + +Guard against injuring the anchorite! If ye have done so, however, well +then, kill him also!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XX. CHILD AND MARRIAGE. + +I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast +I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth. + +Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art +thou a man ENTITLED to desire a child? + +Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy +passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee. + +Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or +discord in thee? + +I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments +shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation. + +Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built +thyself, rectangular in body and soul. + +Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that +purpose may the garden of marriage help thee! + +A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously +rolling wheel--a creating one shalt thou create. + +Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is +more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those +exercising such a will, call I marriage. + +Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that +which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones--ah, what +shall I call it? + +Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the +twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain! + +Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in +heaven. + +Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not +like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils! + +Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath +not matched! + +Laugh not at such marriages! What child hath not had reason to weep over +its parents? + +Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but +when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps. + +Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a +goose mate with one another. + +This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for +himself a small decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it. + +That one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely. But one time he +spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he calleth it. + +Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once +he became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become +an angel. + +Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes. But +even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack. + +Many short follies--that is called love by you. And your marriage +putteth an end to many short follies, with one long stupidity. + +Your love to woman, and woman's love to man--ah, would that it were +sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But generally two animals +alight on one another. + +But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a painful +ardour. It is a torch to light you to loftier paths. + +Beyond yourselves shall ye love some day! Then LEARN first of all to +love. And on that account ye had to drink the bitter cup of your love. + +Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love: thus doth it cause +longing for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in thee, the +creating one! + +Thirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Superman: tell me, +my brother, is this thy will to marriage? + +Holy call I such a will, and such a marriage.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXI. VOLUNTARY DEATH. + +Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the +precept: "Die at the right time! + +Die at the right time: so teacheth Zarathustra. + +To be sure, he who never liveth at the right time, how could he ever die +at the right time? Would that he might never be born!--Thus do I advise +the superfluous ones. + +But even the superfluous ones make much ado about their death, and even +the hollowest nut wanteth to be cracked. + +Every one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not +a festival. Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest +festivals. + +The consummating death I show unto you, which becometh a stimulus and +promise to the living. + +His death, dieth the consummating one triumphantly, surrounded by hoping +and promising ones. + +Thus should one learn to die; and there should be no festival at which +such a dying one doth not consecrate the oaths of the living! + +Thus to die is best; the next best, however, is to die in battle, and +sacrifice a great soul. + +But to the fighter equally hateful as to the victor, is your grinning +death which stealeth nigh like a thief,--and yet cometh as master. + +My death, praise I unto you, the voluntary death, which cometh unto me +because _I_ want it. + +And when shall I want it?--He that hath a goal and an heir, wanteth +death at the right time for the goal and the heir. + +And out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang up no more +withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life. + +Verily, not the rope-makers will I resemble: they lengthen out their +cord, and thereby go ever backward. + +Many a one, also, waxeth too old for his truths and triumphs; a +toothless mouth hath no longer the right to every truth. + +And whoever wanteth to have fame, must take leave of honour betimes, and +practise the difficult art of--going at the right time. + +One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best: that is +known by those who want to be long loved. + +Sour apples are there, no doubt, whose lot is to wait until the last +day of autumn: and at the same time they become ripe, yellow, and +shrivelled. + +In some ageth the heart first, and in others the spirit. And some are +hoary in youth, but the late young keep long young. + +To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart. +Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success. + +Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is cowardice +that holdeth them fast to their branches. + +Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches. Would +that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from +the tree! + +Would that there came preachers of SPEEDY death! Those would be the +appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of life! But I hear only +slow death preached, and patience with all that is "earthly." + +Ah! ye preach patience with what is earthly? This earthly is it that +hath too much patience with you, ye blasphemers! + +Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death +honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early. + +As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, +together with the hatred of the good and just--the Hebrew Jesus: then +was he seized with the longing for death. + +Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just! +Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth--and +laughter also! + +Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have +disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to +disavow! + +But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely +also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul +and the wings of his spirit. + +But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of +melancholy: better understandeth he about life and death. + +Free for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer, when there is no +longer time for Yea: thus understandeth he about death and life. + +That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends: +that do I solicit from the honey of your soul. + +In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an +evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying hath been +unsatisfactory. + +Thus will I die myself, that ye friends may love the earth more for my +sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest in her that bore me. + +Verily, a goal had Zarathustra; he threw his ball. Now be ye friends the +heirs of my goal; to you throw I the golden ball. + +Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so +tarry I still a little while on the earth--pardon me for it! + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXII. THE BESTOWING VIRTUE. + +1. + +When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was +attached, the name of which is "The Pied Cow," there followed him many +people who called themselves his disciples, and kept him company. Thus +came they to a crossroad. Then Zarathustra told them that he now wanted +to go alone; for he was fond of going alone. His disciples, however, +presented him at his departure with a staff, on the golden handle of +which a serpent twined round the sun. Zarathustra rejoiced on account +of the staff, and supported himself thereon; then spake he thus to his +disciples: + +Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because it is +uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always +bestoweth itself. + +Only as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest value. +Goldlike, beameth the glance of the bestower. Gold-lustre maketh peace +between moon and sun. + +Uncommon is the highest virtue, and unprofiting, beaming is it, and soft +of lustre: a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue. + +Verily, I divine you well, my disciples: ye strive like me for the +bestowing virtue. What should ye have in common with cats and wolves? + +It is your thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves: and +therefore have ye the thirst to accumulate all riches in your soul. + +Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your +virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow. + +Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they +shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love. + +Verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing love become; +but healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.-- + +Another selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which +would always steal--the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness. + +With the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous; with the +craving of hunger it measureth him who hath abundance; and ever doth it +prowl round the tables of bestowers. + +Sickness speaketh in such craving, and invisible degeneration; of a +sickly body, speaketh the larcenous craving of this selfishness. + +Tell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of all? Is it not +DEGENERATION?--And we always suspect degeneration when the bestowing +soul is lacking. + +Upward goeth our course from genera on to super-genera. But a horror to +us is the degenerating sense, which saith: "All for myself." + +Upward soareth our sense: thus is it a simile of our body, a simile of +an elevation. Such similes of elevations are the names of the virtues. + +Thus goeth the body through history, a becomer and fighter. And the +spirit--what is it to the body? Its fights' and victories' herald, its +companion and echo. + +Similes, are all names of good and evil; they do not speak out, they +only hint. A fool who seeketh knowledge from them! + +Give heed, my brethren, to every hour when your spirit would speak in +similes: there is the origin of your virtue. + +Elevated is then your body, and raised up; with its delight, enraptureth +it the spirit; so that it becometh creator, and valuer, and lover, and +everything's benefactor. + +When your heart overfloweth broad and full like the river, a blessing +and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin of your virtue. + +When ye are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command +all things, as a loving one's will: there is the origin of your virtue. + +When ye despise pleasant things, and the effeminate couch, and cannot +couch far enough from the effeminate: there is the origin of your +virtue. + +When ye are willers of one will, and when that change of every need is +needful to you: there is the origin of your virtue. + +Verily, a new good and evil is it! Verily, a new deep murmuring, and the +voice of a new fountain! + +Power is it, this new virtue; a ruling thought is it, and around it a +subtle soul: a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge around it. + +2. + +Here paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples. +Then he continued to speak thus--and his voice had changed: + +Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! +Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning +of the earth! Thus do I pray and conjure you. + +Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with +its wings! Ah, there hath always been so much flown-away virtue! + +Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth--yea, back +to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human +meaning! + +A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue flown away +and blundered. Alas! in our body dwelleth still all this delusion and +blundering: body and will hath it there become. + +A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue attempted and +erred. Yea, an attempt hath man been. Alas, much ignorance and error +hath become embodied in us! + +Not only the rationality of millenniums--also their madness, breaketh +out in us. Dangerous is it to be an heir. + +Still fight we step by step with the giant Chance, and over all mankind +hath hitherto ruled nonsense, the lack-of-sense. + +Let your spirit and your virtue be devoted to the sense of the earth, +my brethren: let the value of everything be determined anew by you! +Therefore shall ye be fighters! Therefore shall ye be creators! + +Intelligently doth the body purify itself; attempting with intelligence +it exalteth itself; to the discerners all impulses sanctify themselves; +to the exalted the soul becometh joyful. + +Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be +his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole. + +A thousand paths are there which have never yet been trodden; a thousand +salubrities and hidden islands of life. Unexhausted and undiscovered is +still man and man's world. + +Awake and hearken, ye lonesome ones! From the future come winds with +stealthy pinions, and to fine ears good tidings are proclaimed. + +Ye lonesome ones of to-day, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a +people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people +arise:--and out of it the Superman. + +Verily, a place of healing shall the earth become! And already is a new +odour diffused around it, a salvation-bringing odour--and a new hope! + +3. + +When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he paused, like one who had not +said his last word; and long did he balance the staff doubtfully in his +hand. At last he spake thus--and his voice had changed: + +I now go alone, my disciples! Ye also now go away, and alone! So will I +have it. + +Verily, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against +Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he hath +deceived you. + +The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also +to hate his friends. + +One requiteth a teacher badly if one remain merely a scholar. And why +will ye not pluck at my wreath? + +Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse? +Take heed lest a statue crush you! + +Ye say, ye believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra! +Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers! + +Ye had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do all +believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. + +Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all +denied me, will I return unto you. + +Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones; +with another love shall I then love you. + +And once again shall ye have become friends unto me, and children of one +hope: then will I be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great +noontide with you. + +And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course +between animal and Superman, and celebrateth his advance to the evening +as his highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning. + +At such time will the down-goer bless himself, that he should be an +over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide. + +"DEAD ARE ALL THE GODS: NOW DO WE DESIRE THE SUPERMAN TO LIVE."--Let +this be our final will at the great noontide!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. SECOND PART. + +"--and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you. + +Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones; +with another love shall I then love you."--ZARATHUSTRA, I., "The +Bestowing Virtue." + + + + +XXIII. THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR. + +After this Zarathustra returned again into the mountains to the solitude +of his cave, and withdrew himself from men, waiting like a sower who +hath scattered his seed. His soul, however, became impatient and full of +longing for those whom he loved: because he had still much to give them. +For this is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep +modest as a giver. + +Thus passed with the lonesome one months and years; his wisdom meanwhile +increased, and caused him pain by its abundance. + +One morning, however, he awoke ere the rosy dawn, and having meditated +long on his couch, at last spake thus to his heart: + +Why did I startle in my dream, so that I awoke? Did not a child come to +me, carrying a mirror? + +"O Zarathustra"--said the child unto me--"look at thyself in the +mirror!" + +But when I looked into the mirror, I shrieked, and my heart throbbed: +for not myself did I see therein, but a devil's grimace and derision. + +Verily, all too well do I understand the dream's portent and monition: +my DOCTRINE is in danger; tares want to be called wheat! + +Mine enemies have grown powerful and have disfigured the likeness of +my doctrine, so that my dearest ones have to blush for the gifts that I +gave them. + +Lost are my friends; the hour hath come for me to seek my lost ones!-- + +With these words Zarathustra started up, not however like a person in +anguish seeking relief, but rather like a seer and a singer whom the +spirit inspireth. With amazement did his eagle and serpent gaze upon +him: for a coming bliss overspread his countenance like the rosy dawn. + +What hath happened unto me, mine animals?--said Zarathustra. Am I not +transformed? Hath not bliss come unto me like a whirlwind? + +Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still +too young--so have patience with it! + +Wounded am I by my happiness: all sufferers shall be physicians unto me! + +To my friends can I again go down, and also to mine enemies! Zarathustra +can again speak and bestow, and show his best love to his loved ones! + +My impatient love overfloweth in streams,--down towards sunrise and +sunset. Out of silent mountains and storms of affliction, rusheth my +soul into the valleys. + +Too long have I longed and looked into the distance. Too long hath +solitude possessed me: thus have I unlearned to keep silence. + +Utterance have I become altogether, and the brawling of a brook from +high rocks: downward into the valleys will I hurl my speech. + +And let the stream of my love sweep into unfrequented channels! How +should a stream not finally find its way to the sea! + +Forsooth, there is a lake in me, sequestered and self-sufficing; but the +stream of my love beareth this along with it, down--to the sea! + +New paths do I tread, a new speech cometh unto me; tired have I become-- +like all creators--of the old tongues. No longer will my spirit walk on +worn-out soles. + +Too slowly runneth all speaking for me:--into thy chariot, O storm, do I +leap! And even thee will I whip with my spite! + +Like a cry and an huzza will I traverse wide seas, till I find the Happy +Isles where my friends sojourn;-- + +And mine enemies amongst them! How I now love every one unto whom I may +but speak! Even mine enemies pertain to my bliss. + +And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then doth my spear always +help me up best: it is my foot's ever ready servant:-- + +The spear which I hurl at mine enemies! How grateful am I to mine +enemies that I may at last hurl it! + +Too great hath been the tension of my cloud: 'twixt laughters of +lightnings will I cast hail-showers into the depths. + +Violently will my breast then heave; violently will it blow its storm +over the mountains: thus cometh its assuagement. + +Verily, like a storm cometh my happiness, and my freedom! But mine +enemies shall think that THE EVIL ONE roareth over their heads. + +Yea, ye also, my friends, will be alarmed by my wild wisdom; and perhaps +ye will flee therefrom, along with mine enemies. + +Ah, that I knew how to lure you back with shepherds' flutes! Ah, that +my lioness wisdom would learn to roar softly! And much have we already +learned with one another! + +My wild wisdom became pregnant on the lonesome mountains; on the rough +stones did she bear the youngest of her young. + +Now runneth she foolishly in the arid wilderness, and seeketh and +seeketh the soft sward--mine old, wild wisdom! + +On the soft sward of your hearts, my friends!--on your love, would she +fain couch her dearest one!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXIV. IN THE HAPPY ISLES. + +The figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and in falling +the red skins of them break. A north wind am I to ripe figs. + +Thus, like figs, do these doctrines fall for you, my friends: imbibe +now their juice and their sweet substance! It is autumn all around, and +clear sky, and afternoon. + +Lo, what fullness is around us! And out of the midst of superabundance, +it is delightful to look out upon distant seas. + +Once did people say God, when they looked out upon distant seas; now, +however, have I taught you to say, Superman. + +God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond +your creating will. + +Could ye CREATE a God?--Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But +ye could well create the Superman. + +Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers and forefathers +of the Superman could ye transform yourselves: and let that be your best +creating!-- + +God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing restricted to +the conceivable. + +Could ye CONCEIVE a God?--But let this mean Will to Truth unto you, +that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly +visible, the humanly sensible! Your own discernment shall ye follow out +to the end! + +And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your +reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become! And +verily, for your bliss, ye discerning ones! + +And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones? +Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in the +irrational. + +But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: IF there +were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! THEREFORE there are no +Gods. + +Yea, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, doth it draw me.-- + +God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the bitterness of this +conjecture without dying? Shall his faith be taken from the creating +one, and from the eagle his flights into eagle-heights? + +God is a thought--it maketh all the straight crooked, and all that +standeth reel. What? Time would be gone, and all the perishable would be +but a lie? + +To think this is giddiness and vertigo to human limbs, and even vomiting +to the stomach: verily, the reeling sickness do I call it, to conjecture +such a thing. + +Evil do I call it and misanthropic: all that teaching about the one, and +the plenum, and the unmoved, and the sufficient, and the imperishable! + +All the imperishable--that's but a simile, and the poets lie too much.-- + +But of time and of becoming shall the best similes speak: a praise shall +they be, and a justification of all perishableness! + +Creating--that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's +alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, +and much transformation. + +Yea, much bitter dying must there be in your life, ye creators! Thus are +ye advocates and justifiers of all perishableness. + +For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must also +be willing to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of the +child-bearer. + +Verily, through a hundred souls went I my way, and through a hundred +cradles and birth-throes. Many a farewell have I taken; I know the +heart-breaking last hours. + +But so willeth it my creating Will, my fate. Or, to tell you it more +candidly: just such a fate--willeth my Will. + +All FEELING suffereth in me, and is in prison: but my WILLING ever +cometh to me as mine emancipator and comforter. + +Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and +emancipation--so teacheth you Zarathustra. + +No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, +that that great debility may ever be far from me! + +And also in discerning do I feel only my will's procreating and evolving +delight; and if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is because there +is will to procreation in it. + +Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to +create if there were--Gods! + +But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus +impelleth it the hammer to the stone. + +Ah, ye men, within the stone slumbereth an image for me, the image of my +visions! Ah, that it should slumber in the hardest, ugliest stone! + +Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone fly +the fragments: what's that to me? + +I will complete it: for a shadow came unto me--the stillest and lightest +of all things once came unto me! + +The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow. Ah, my brethren! Of +what account now are--the Gods to me!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXV. THE PITIFUL. + +My friends, there hath arisen a satire on your friend: "Behold +Zarathustra! Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst animals?" + +But it is better said in this wise: "The discerning one walketh amongst +men AS amongst animals." + +Man himself is to the discerning one: the animal with red cheeks. + +How hath that happened unto him? Is it not because he hath had to be +ashamed too oft? + +O my friends! Thus speaketh the discerning one: shame, shame, +shame--that is the history of man! + +And on that account doth the noble one enjoin upon himself not to abash: +bashfulness doth he enjoin on himself in presence of all sufferers. + +Verily, I like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their +pity: too destitute are they of bashfulness. + +If I must be pitiful, I dislike to be called so; and if I be so, it is +preferably at a distance. + +Preferably also do I shroud my head, and flee, before being recognised: +and thus do I bid you do, my friends! + +May my destiny ever lead unafflicted ones like you across my path, and +those with whom I MAY have hope and repast and honey in common! + +Verily, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but something +better did I always seem to do when I had learned to enjoy myself +better. + +Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: +that alone, my brethren, is our original sin! + +And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we unlearn best to +give pain unto others, and to contrive pain. + +Therefore do I wash the hand that hath helped the sufferer; therefore do +I wipe also my soul. + +For in seeing the sufferer suffering--thereof was I ashamed on account +of his shame; and in helping him, sorely did I wound his pride. + +Great obligations do not make grateful, but revengeful; and when a small +kindness is not forgotten, it becometh a gnawing worm. + +"Be shy in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!"--thus do I advise those +who have naught to bestow. + +I, however, am a bestower: willingly do I bestow as friend to friends. +Strangers, however, and the poor, may pluck for themselves the fruit +from my tree: thus doth it cause less shame. + +Beggars, however, one should entirely do away with! Verily, it annoyeth +one to give unto them, and it annoyeth one not to give unto them. + +And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the +sting of conscience teacheth one to sting. + +The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts. Verily, better to +have done evilly than to have thought pettily! + +To be sure, ye say: "The delight in petty evils spareth one many a great +evil deed." But here one should not wish to be sparing. + +Like a boil is the evil deed: it itcheth and irritateth and breaketh +forth--it speaketh honourably. + +"Behold, I am disease," saith the evil deed: that is its honourableness. + +But like infection is the petty thought: it creepeth and hideth, and +wanteth to be nowhere--until the whole body is decayed and withered by +the petty infection. + +To him however, who is possessed of a devil, I would whisper this word +in the ear: "Better for thee to rear up thy devil! Even for thee there +is still a path to greatness!"-- + +Ah, my brethren! One knoweth a little too much about every one! And many +a one becometh transparent to us, but still we can by no means penetrate +him. + +It is difficult to live among men because silence is so difficult. + +And not to him who is offensive to us are we most unfair, but to him who +doth not concern us at all. + +If, however, thou hast a suffering friend, then be a resting-place for +his suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp-bed: thus wilt thou +serve him best. + +And if a friend doeth thee wrong, then say: "I forgive thee what thou +hast done unto me; that thou hast done it unto THYSELF, however--how +could I forgive that!" + +Thus speaketh all great love: it surpasseth even forgiveness and pity. + +One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how +quickly doth one's head run away! + +Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the +pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the +follies of the pitiful? + +Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their +pity! + +Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: "Even God hath his hell: +it is his love for man." + +And lately, did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: of his pity +for man hath God died."-- + +So be ye warned against pity: FROM THENCE there yet cometh unto men a +heavy cloud! Verily, I understand weather-signs! + +But attend also to this word: All great love is above all its pity: for +it seeketh--to create what is loved! + +"Myself do I offer unto my love, AND MY NEIGHBOUR AS MYSELF"--such is +the language of all creators. + +All creators, however, are hard.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXVI. THE PRIESTS. + +And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples, and spake these +words unto them: + +"Here are priests: but although they are mine enemies, pass them quietly +and with sleeping swords! + +Even among them there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much--: +so they want to make others suffer. + +Bad enemies are they: nothing is more revengeful than their meekness. +And readily doth he soil himself who toucheth them. + +But my blood is related to theirs; and I want withal to see my blood +honoured in theirs."-- + +And when they had passed, a pain attacked Zarathustra; but not long had +he struggled with the pain, when he began to speak thus: + +It moveth my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste; but +that is the smallest matter unto me, since I am among men. + +But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners are they unto me, +and stigmatised ones. He whom they call Saviour put them in fetters:-- + +In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that some one would +save them from their Saviour! + +On an isle they once thought they had landed, when the sea tossed them +about; but behold, it was a slumbering monster! + +False values and fatuous words: these are the worst monsters for +mortals--long slumbereth and waiteth the fate that is in them. + +But at last it cometh and awaketh and devoureth and engulfeth whatever +hath built tabernacles upon it. + +Oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have built +themselves! Churches, they call their sweet-smelling caves! + +Oh, that falsified light, that mustified air! Where the soul--may not +fly aloft to its height! + +But so enjoineth their belief: "On your knees, up the stair, ye +sinners!" + +Verily, rather would I see a shameless one than the distorted eyes of +their shame and devotion! + +Who created for themselves such caves and penitence-stairs? Was it not +those who sought to conceal themselves, and were ashamed under the clear +sky? + +And only when the clear sky looketh again through ruined roofs, and down +upon grass and red poppies on ruined walls--will I again turn my heart +to the seats of this God. + +They called God that which opposed and afflicted them: and verily, there +was much hero-spirit in their worship! + +And they knew not how to love their God otherwise than by nailing men to +the cross! + +As corpses they thought to live; in black draped they their corpses; +even in their talk do I still feel the evil flavour of charnel-houses. + +And he who liveth nigh unto them liveth nigh unto black pools, wherein +the toad singeth his song with sweet gravity. + +Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their +Saviour: more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear unto +me! + +Naked, would I like to see them: for beauty alone should preach +penitence. But whom would that disguised affliction convince! + +Verily, their Saviours themselves came not from freedom and freedom's +seventh heaven! Verily, they themselves never trod the carpets of +knowledge! + +Of defects did the spirit of those Saviours consist; but into every +defect had they put their illusion, their stop-gap, which they called +God. + +In their pity was their spirit drowned; and when they swelled and +o'erswelled with pity, there always floated to the surface a great +folly. + +Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their foot-bridge; +as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future! Verily, those +shepherds also were still of the flock! + +Small spirits and spacious souls had those shepherds: but, my brethren, +what small domains have even the most spacious souls hitherto been! + +Characters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly +taught that truth is proved by blood. + +But blood is the very worst witness to truth; blood tainteth the purest +teaching, and turneth it into delusion and hatred of heart. + +And when a person goeth through fire for his teaching--what doth that +prove! It is more, verily, when out of one's own burning cometh one's +own teaching! + +Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there ariseth the +blusterer, the "Saviour." + +Greater ones, verily, have there been, and higher-born ones, than those +whom the people call Saviours, those rapturous blusterers! + +And by still greater ones than any of the Saviours must ye be saved, my +brethren, if ye would find the way to freedom! + +Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them, +the greatest man and the smallest man:-- + +All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily, even the greatest +found I--all-too-human!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS. + +With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and +somnolent senses. + +But beauty's voice speaketh gently: it appealeth only to the most +awakened souls. + +Gently vibrated and laughed unto me to-day my buckler; it was beauty's +holy laughing and thrilling. + +At you, ye virtuous ones, laughed my beauty to-day. And thus came its +voice unto me: "They want--to be paid besides!" + +Ye want to be paid besides, ye virtuous ones! Ye want reward for virtue, +and heaven for earth, and eternity for your to-day? + +And now ye upbraid me for teaching that there is no reward-giver, +nor paymaster? And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own +reward. + +Ah! this is my sorrow: into the basis of things have reward and +punishment been insinuated--and now even into the basis of your souls, +ye virtuous ones! + +But like the snout of the boar shall my word grub up the basis of your +souls; a ploughshare will I be called by you. + +All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and when ye +lie in the sun, grubbed up and broken, then will also your falsehood be +separated from your truth. + +For this is your truth: ye are TOO PURE for the filth of the words: +vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution. + +Ye love your virtue as a mother loveth her child; but when did one hear +of a mother wanting to be paid for her love? + +It is your dearest Self, your virtue. The ring's thirst is in you: to +reach itself again struggleth every ring, and turneth itself. + +And like the star that goeth out, so is every work of your virtue: ever +is its light on its way and travelling--and when will it cease to be on +its way? + +Thus is the light of your virtue still on its way, even when its work +is done. Be it forgotten and dead, still its ray of light liveth and +travelleth. + +That your virtue is your Self, and not an outward thing, a skin, or +a cloak: that is the truth from the basis of your souls, ye virtuous +ones!-- + +But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth writhing under +the lash: and ye have hearkened too much unto their crying! + +And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; +and when once their hatred and jealousy relax the limbs, their "justice" +becometh lively and rubbeth its sleepy eyes. + +And others are there who are drawn downwards: their devils draw them. +But the more they sink, the more ardently gloweth their eye, and the +longing for their God. + +Ah! their crying also hath reached your ears, ye virtuous ones: "What I +am NOT, that, that is God to me, and virtue!" + +And others are there who go along heavily and creakingly, like carts +taking stones downhill: they talk much of dignity and virtue--their drag +they call virtue! + +And others are there who are like eight-day clocks when wound up; they +tick, and want people to call ticking--virtue. + +Verily, in those have I mine amusement: wherever I find such clocks I +shall wind them up with my mockery, and they shall even whirr thereby! + +And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake +of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their +unrighteousness. + +Ah! how ineptly cometh the word "virtue" out of their mouth! And when +they say: "I am just," it always soundeth like: "I am just--revenged!" + +With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies; +and they elevate themselves only that they may lower others. + +And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from +among the bulrushes: "Virtue--that is to sit quietly in the swamp. + +We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would bite; and in all +matters we have the opinion that is given us." + +And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that virtue is a +sort of attitude. + +Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue, +but their heart knoweth naught thereof. + +And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say: "Virtue +is necessary"; but after all they believe only that policemen are +necessary. + +And many a one who cannot see men's loftiness, calleth it virtue to see +their baseness far too well: thus calleth he his evil eye virtue.-- + +And some want to be edified and raised up, and call it virtue: and +others want to be cast down,--and likewise call it virtue. + +And thus do almost all think that they participate in virtue; and at +least every one claimeth to be an authority on "good" and "evil." + +But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and fools: "What do +YE know of virtue! What COULD ye know of virtue!"-- + +But that ye, my friends, might become weary of the old words which ye +have learned from the fools and liars: + +That ye might become weary of the words "reward," "retribution," +"punishment," "righteous vengeance."-- + +That ye might become weary of saying: "That an action is good is because +it is unselfish." + +Ah! my friends! That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is +in the child: let that be YOUR formula of virtue! + +Verily, I have taken from you a hundred formulae and your virtue's +favourite playthings; and now ye upbraid me, as children upbraid. + +They played by the sea--then came there a wave and swept their +playthings into the deep: and now do they cry. + +But the same wave shall bring them new playthings, and spread before +them new speckled shells! + +Thus will they be comforted; and like them shall ye also, my friends, +have your comforting--and new speckled shells!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXVIII. THE RABBLE. + +Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all +fountains are poisoned. + +To everything cleanly am I well disposed; but I hate to see the grinning +mouths and the thirst of the unclean. + +They cast their eye down into the fountain: and now glanceth up to me +their odious smile out of the fountain. + +The holy water have they poisoned with their lustfulness; and when they +called their filthy dreams delight, then poisoned they also the words. + +Indignant becometh the flame when they put their damp hearts to the +fire; the spirit itself bubbleth and smoketh when the rabble approach +the fire. + +Mawkish and over-mellow becometh the fruit in their hands: unsteady, and +withered at the top, doth their look make the fruit-tree. + +And many a one who hath turned away from life, hath only turned away +from the rabble: he hated to share with them fountain, flame, and fruit. + +And many a one who hath gone into the wilderness and suffered thirst +with beasts of prey, disliked only to sit at the cistern with filthy +camel-drivers. + +And many a one who hath come along as a destroyer, and as a hailstorm +to all cornfields, wanted merely to put his foot into the jaws of the +rabble, and thus stop their throat. + +And it is not the mouthful which hath most choked me, to know that life +itself requireth enmity and death and torture-crosses:-- + +But I asked once, and suffocated almost with my question: What? is the +rabble also NECESSARY for life? + +Are poisoned fountains necessary, and stinking fires, and filthy dreams, +and maggots in the bread of life? + +Not my hatred, but my loathing, gnawed hungrily at my life! Ah, ofttimes +became I weary of spirit, when I found even the rabble spiritual! + +And on the rulers turned I my back, when I saw what they now call +ruling: to traffic and bargain for power--with the rabble! + +Amongst peoples of a strange language did I dwell, with stopped ears: so +that the language of their trafficking might remain strange unto me, and +their bargaining for power. + +And holding my nose, I went morosely through all yesterdays and to-days: +verily, badly smell all yesterdays and to-days of the scribbling rabble! + +Like a cripple become deaf, and blind, and dumb--thus have I lived long; +that I might not live with the power-rabble, the scribe-rabble, and the +pleasure-rabble. + +Toilsomely did my spirit mount stairs, and cautiously; alms of delight +were its refreshment; on the staff did life creep along with the blind +one. + +What hath happened unto me? How have I freed myself from loathing? +Who hath rejuvenated mine eye? How have I flown to the height where no +rabble any longer sit at the wells? + +Did my loathing itself create for me wings and fountain-divining powers? +Verily, to the loftiest height had I to fly, to find again the well of +delight! + +Oh, I have found it, my brethren! Here on the loftiest height bubbleth +up for me the well of delight! And there is a life at whose waters none +of the rabble drink with me! + +Almost too violently dost thou flow for me, thou fountain of delight! +And often emptiest thou the goblet again, in wanting to fill it! + +And yet must I learn to approach thee more modestly: far too violently +doth my heart still flow towards thee:-- + +My heart on which my summer burneth, my short, hot, melancholy, +over-happy summer: how my summer heart longeth for thy coolness! + +Past, the lingering distress of my spring! Past, the wickedness of my +snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer-noontide! + +A summer on the loftiest height, with cold fountains and blissful +stillness: oh, come, my friends, that the stillness may become more +blissful! + +For this is OUR height and our home: too high and steep do we here dwell +for all uncleanly ones and their thirst. + +Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends! How +could it become turbid thereby! It shall laugh back to you with ITS +purity. + +On the tree of the future build we our nest; eagles shall bring us lone +ones food in their beaks! + +Verily, no food of which the impure could be fellow-partakers! Fire, +would they think they devoured, and burn their mouths! + +Verily, no abodes do we here keep ready for the impure! An ice-cave to +their bodies would our happiness be, and to their spirits! + +And as strong winds will we live above them, neighbours to the eagles, +neighbours to the snow, neighbours to the sun: thus live the strong +winds. + +And like a wind will I one day blow amongst them, and with my spirit, +take the breath from their spirit: thus willeth my future. + +Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; and this counsel +counselleth he to his enemies, and to whatever spitteth and speweth: +"Take care not to spit AGAINST the wind!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXIX. THE TARANTULAS. + +Lo, this is the tarantula's den! Wouldst thou see the tarantula itself? +Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble. + +There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy +back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul. + +Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab; +with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy! + +Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, +ye preachers of EQUALITY! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly +revengeful ones! + +But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I +laugh in your face my laughter of the height. + +Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your +den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word +"justice." + +Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE--that is for me the bridge +to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms. + +Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be +very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our +vengeance"--thus do they talk to one another. + +"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like +us"--thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves. + +"And 'Will to Equality'--that itself shall henceforth be the name of +virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!" + +Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in +you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves +thus in virtue-words! + +Fretted conceit and suppressed envy--perhaps your fathers' conceit and +envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance. + +What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in +the son the father's revealed secret. + +Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth +them--but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not +spirit, but envy, that maketh them so. + +Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and this is the +sign of their jealousy--they always go too far: so that their fatigue +hath at last to go to sleep on the snow. + +In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is +maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss. + +But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse +to punish is powerful! + +They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer +the hangman and the sleuth-hound. + +Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their +souls not only honey is lacking. + +And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for +them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but--power! + +My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others. + +There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time +preachers of equality, and tarantulas. + +That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these +poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life--is because they would thereby +do injury. + +To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for +with those the preaching of death is still most at home. + +Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they +themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners. + +With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. +For thus speaketh justice UNTO ME: "Men are not equal." + +And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman, +if I spake otherwise? + +On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and +always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my +great love make me speak! + +Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; +and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other +the supreme fight! + +Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of +values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again +and again surpass itself! + +Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs--life itself: into +remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties-- +THEREFORE doth it require elevation! + +And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and +variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to +surpass itself. + +And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula's den is, riseth +aloft an ancient temple's ruins--just behold it with enlightened eyes! + +Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as +the wisest ones about the secret of life! + +That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power +and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable. + +How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with +light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving +ones.-- + +Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! +Divinely will we strive AGAINST one another!-- + +Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely +steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger! + +"Punishment must there be, and justice"--so thinketh it: "not +gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!" + +Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also +dizzy with revenge! + +That I may NOT turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this +pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance! + +Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, +he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXX. THE FAMOUS WISE ONES. + +The people have ye served and the people's superstition--NOT the +truth!--all ye famous wise ones! And just on that account did they pay +you reverence. + +And on that account also did they tolerate your unbelief, because it +was a pleasantry and a by-path for the people. Thus doth the master give +free scope to his slaves, and even enjoyeth their presumptuousness. + +But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs--is the free +spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods. + +To hunt him out of his lair--that was always called "sense of right" by +the people: on him do they still hound their sharpest-toothed dogs. + +"For there the truth is, where the people are! Woe, woe to the seeking +ones!"--thus hath it echoed through all time. + +Your people would ye justify in their reverence: that called ye "Will to +Truth," ye famous wise ones! + +And your heart hath always said to itself: "From the people have I come: +from thence came to me also the voice of God." + +Stiff-necked and artful, like the ass, have ye always been, as the +advocates of the people. + +And many a powerful one who wanted to run well with the people, hath +harnessed in front of his horses--a donkey, a famous wise man. + +And now, ye famous wise ones, I would have you finally throw off +entirely the skin of the lion! + +The skin of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, and the dishevelled +locks of the investigator, the searcher, and the conqueror! + +Ah! for me to learn to believe in your "conscientiousness," ye would +first have to break your venerating will. + +Conscientious--so call I him who goeth into God-forsaken wildernesses, +and hath broken his venerating heart. + +In the yellow sands and burnt by the sun, he doubtless peereth thirstily +at the isles rich in fountains, where life reposeth under shady trees. + +But his thirst doth not persuade him to become like those comfortable +ones: for where there are oases, there are also idols. + +Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken: so doth the lion-will wish +itself. + +Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from Deities and adorations, +fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lonesome: so is the will of the +conscientious. + +In the wilderness have ever dwelt the conscientious, the free spirits, +as lords of the wilderness; but in the cities dwell the well-foddered, +famous wise ones--the draught-beasts. + +For, always, do they draw, as asses--the PEOPLE'S carts! + +Not that I on that account upbraid them: but serving ones do they +remain, and harnessed ones, even though they glitter in golden harness. + +And often have they been good servants and worthy of their hire. For +thus saith virtue: "If thou must be a servant, seek him unto whom thy +service is most useful! + +The spirit and virtue of thy master shall advance by thou being his +servant: thus wilt thou thyself advance with his spirit and virtue!" + +And verily, ye famous wise ones, ye servants of the people! Ye +yourselves have advanced with the people's spirit and virtue--and the +people by you! To your honour do I say it! + +But the people ye remain for me, even with your virtues, the people with +purblind eyes--the people who know not what SPIRIT is! + +Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life: by its own torture doth +it increase its own knowledge,--did ye know that before? + +And the spirit's happiness is this: to be anointed and consecrated with +tears as a sacrificial victim,--did ye know that before? + +And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall +yet testify to the power of the sun into which he hath gazed,--did ye +know that before? + +And with mountains shall the discerning one learn to BUILD! It is +a small thing for the spirit to remove mountains,--did ye know that +before? + +Ye know only the sparks of the spirit: but ye do not see the anvil which +it is, and the cruelty of its hammer! + +Verily, ye know not the spirit's pride! But still less could ye endure +the spirit's humility, should it ever want to speak! + +And never yet could ye cast your spirit into a pit of snow: ye are not +hot enough for that! Thus are ye unaware, also, of the delight of its +coldness. + +In all respects, however, ye make too familiar with the spirit; and out +of wisdom have ye often made an almshouse and a hospital for bad poets. + +Ye are not eagles: thus have ye never experienced the happiness of the +alarm of the spirit. And he who is not a bird should not camp above +abysses. + +Ye seem to me lukewarm ones: but coldly floweth all deep knowledge. +Ice-cold are the innermost wells of the spirit: a refreshment to hot +hands and handlers. + +Respectable do ye there stand, and stiff, and with straight backs, ye +famous wise ones!--no strong wind or will impelleth you. + +Have ye ne'er seen a sail crossing the sea, rounded and inflated, and +trembling with the violence of the wind? + +Like the sail trembling with the violence of the spirit, doth my wisdom +cross the sea--my wild wisdom! + +But ye servants of the people, ye famous wise ones--how COULD ye go with +me!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXI. THE NIGHT-SONG. + +'Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also +is a gushing fountain. + +'Tis night: now only do all songs of the loving ones awake. And my soul +also is the song of a loving one. + +Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me; it longeth to find +expression. A craving for love is within me, which speaketh itself the +language of love. + +Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my lonesomeness to be +begirt with light! + +Ah, that I were dark and nightly! How would I suck at the breasts of +light! + +And you yourselves would I bless, ye twinkling starlets and glow-worms +aloft!--and would rejoice in the gifts of your light. + +But I live in mine own light, I drink again into myself the flames that +break forth from me. + +I know not the happiness of the receiver; and oft have I dreamt that +stealing must be more blessed than receiving. + +It is my poverty that my hand never ceaseth bestowing; it is mine envy +that I see waiting eyes and the brightened nights of longing. + +Oh, the misery of all bestowers! Oh, the darkening of my sun! Oh, the +craving to crave! Oh, the violent hunger in satiety! + +They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul? There is a gap 'twixt +giving and receiving; and the smallest gap hath finally to be bridged +over. + +A hunger ariseth out of my beauty: I should like to injure those I +illumine; I should like to rob those I have gifted:--thus do I hunger +for wickedness. + +Withdrawing my hand when another hand already stretcheth out to it; +hesitating like the cascade, which hesitateth even in its leap:--thus do +I hunger for wickedness! + +Such revenge doth mine abundance think of: such mischief welleth out of +my lonesomeness. + +My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing; my virtue became weary of +itself by its abundance! + +He who ever bestoweth is in danger of losing his shame; to him who ever +dispenseth, the hand and heart become callous by very dispensing. + +Mine eye no longer overfloweth for the shame of suppliants; my hand hath +become too hard for the trembling of filled hands. + +Whence have gone the tears of mine eye, and the down of my heart? Oh, +the lonesomeness of all bestowers! Oh, the silence of all shining ones! + +Many suns circle in desert space: to all that is dark do they speak with +their light--but to me they are silent. + +Oh, this is the hostility of light to the shining one: unpityingly doth +it pursue its course. + +Unfair to the shining one in its innermost heart, cold to the +suns:--thus travelleth every sun. + +Like a storm do the suns pursue their courses: that is their travelling. +Their inexorable will do they follow: that is their coldness. + +Oh, ye only is it, ye dark, nightly ones, that extract warmth from the +shining ones! Oh, ye only drink milk and refreshment from the light's +udders! + +Ah, there is ice around me; my hand burneth with the iciness! Ah, there +is thirst in me; it panteth after your thirst! + +'Tis night: alas, that I have to be light! And thirst for the nightly! +And lonesomeness! + +'Tis night: now doth my longing break forth in me as a fountain,--for +speech do I long. + +'Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also +is a gushing fountain. + +'Tis night: now do all songs of loving ones awake. And my soul also is +the song of a loving one.-- + +Thus sang Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXII. THE DANCE-SONG. + +One evening went Zarathustra and his disciples through the forest; and +when he sought for a well, lo, he lighted upon a green meadow peacefully +surrounded with trees and bushes, where maidens were dancing together. +As soon as the maidens recognised Zarathustra, they ceased dancing; +Zarathustra, however, approached them with friendly mien and spake these +words: + +Cease not your dancing, ye lovely maidens! No game-spoiler hath come to +you with evil eye, no enemy of maidens. + +God's advocate am I with the devil: he, however, is the spirit of +gravity. How could I, ye light-footed ones, be hostile to divine dances? +Or to maidens' feet with fine ankles? + +To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not +afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses. + +And even the little God may he find, who is dearest to maidens: beside +the well lieth he quietly, with closed eyes. + +Verily, in broad daylight did he fall asleep, the sluggard! Had he +perhaps chased butterflies too much? + +Upbraid me not, ye beautiful dancers, when I chasten the little God +somewhat! He will cry, certainly, and weep--but he is laughable even +when weeping! + +And with tears in his eyes shall he ask you for a dance; and I myself +will sing a song to his dance: + +A dance-song and satire on the spirit of gravity my supremest, +powerfulest devil, who is said to be "lord of the world."-- + +And this is the song that Zarathustra sang when Cupid and the maidens +danced together: + +Of late did I gaze into thine eye, O Life! And into the unfathomable did +I there seem to sink. + +But thou pulledst me out with a golden angle; derisively didst thou +laugh when I called thee unfathomable. + +"Such is the language of all fish," saidst thou; "what THEY do not +fathom is unfathomable. + +But changeable am I only, and wild, and altogether a woman, and no +virtuous one: + +Though I be called by you men the 'profound one,' or the 'faithful one,' +'the eternal one,' 'the mysterious one.' + +But ye men endow us always with your own virtues--alas, ye virtuous +ones!" + +Thus did she laugh, the unbelievable one; but never do I believe her and +her laughter, when she speaketh evil of herself. + +And when I talked face to face with my wild Wisdom, she said to me +angrily: "Thou willest, thou cravest, thou lovest; on that account alone +dost thou PRAISE Life!" + +Then had I almost answered indignantly and told the truth to the angry +one; and one cannot answer more indignantly than when one "telleth the +truth" to one's Wisdom. + +For thus do things stand with us three. In my heart do I love only +Life--and verily, most when I hate her! + +But that I am fond of Wisdom, and often too fond, is because she +remindeth me very strongly of Life! + +She hath her eye, her laugh, and even her golden angle-rod: am I +responsible for it that both are so alike? + +And when once Life asked me: "Who is she then, this Wisdom?"--then said +I eagerly: "Ah, yes! Wisdom! + +One thirsteth for her and is not satisfied, one looketh through veils, +one graspeth through nets. + +Is she beautiful? What do I know! But the oldest carps are still lured +by her. + +Changeable is she, and wayward; often have I seen her bite her lip, and +pass the comb against the grain of her hair. + +Perhaps she is wicked and false, and altogether a woman; but when she +speaketh ill of herself, just then doth she seduce most." + +When I had said this unto Life, then laughed she maliciously, and shut +her eyes. "Of whom dost thou speak?" said she. "Perhaps of me? + +And if thou wert right--is it proper to say THAT in such wise to my +face! But now, pray, speak also of thy Wisdom!" + +Ah, and now hast thou again opened thine eyes, O beloved Life! And into +the unfathomable have I again seemed to sink.-- + +Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance was over and the maidens had +departed, he became sad. + +"The sun hath been long set," said he at last, "the meadow is damp, and +from the forest cometh coolness. + +An unknown presence is about me, and gazeth thoughtfully. What! Thou +livest still, Zarathustra? + +Why? Wherefore? Whereby? Whither? Where? How? Is it not folly still to +live?-- + +Ah, my friends; the evening is it which thus interrogateth in me. +Forgive me my sadness! + +Evening hath come on: forgive me that evening hath come on!" + +Thus sang Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXIII. THE GRAVE-SONG. + +"Yonder is the grave-island, the silent isle; yonder also are the graves +of my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of life." + +Resolving thus in my heart, did I sail o'er the sea.-- + +Oh, ye sights and scenes of my youth! Oh, all ye gleams of love, ye +divine fleeting gleams! How could ye perish so soon for me! I think of +you to-day as my dead ones. + +From you, my dearest dead ones, cometh unto me a sweet savour, +heart-opening and melting. Verily, it convulseth and openeth the heart +of the lone seafarer. + +Still am I the richest and most to be envied--I, the lonesomest one! +For I HAVE POSSESSED you, and ye possess me still. Tell me: to whom hath +there ever fallen such rosy apples from the tree as have fallen unto me? + +Still am I your love's heir and heritage, blooming to your memory with +many-hued, wild-growing virtues, O ye dearest ones! + +Ah, we were made to remain nigh unto each other, ye kindly strange +marvels; and not like timid birds did ye come to me and my longing--nay, +but as trusting ones to a trusting one! + +Yea, made for faithfulness, like me, and for fond eternities, must I now +name you by your faithlessness, ye divine glances and fleeting gleams: +no other name have I yet learnt. + +Verily, too early did ye die for me, ye fugitives. Yet did ye not flee +from me, nor did I flee from you: innocent are we to each other in our +faithlessness. + +To kill ME, did they strangle you, ye singing birds of my hopes! Yea, at +you, ye dearest ones, did malice ever shoot its arrows--to hit my heart! + +And they hit it! Because ye were always my dearest, my possession and my +possessedness: ON THAT ACCOUNT had ye to die young, and far too early! + +At my most vulnerable point did they shoot the arrow--namely, at you, +whose skin is like down--or more like the smile that dieth at a glance! + +But this word will I say unto mine enemies: What is all manslaughter in +comparison with what ye have done unto me! + +Worse evil did ye do unto me than all manslaughter; the irretrievable +did ye take from me:--thus do I speak unto you, mine enemies! + +Slew ye not my youth's visions and dearest marvels! My playmates took ye +from me, the blessed spirits! To their memory do I deposit this wreath +and this curse. + +This curse upon you, mine enemies! Have ye not made mine eternal short, +as a tone dieth away in a cold night! Scarcely, as the twinkle of divine +eyes, did it come to me--as a fleeting gleam! + +Thus spake once in a happy hour my purity: "Divine shall everything be +unto me." + +Then did ye haunt me with foul phantoms; ah, whither hath that happy +hour now fled! + +"All days shall be holy unto me"--so spake once the wisdom of my youth: +verily, the language of a joyous wisdom! + +But then did ye enemies steal my nights, and sold them to sleepless +torture: ah, whither hath that joyous wisdom now fled? + +Once did I long for happy auspices: then did ye lead an owl-monster +across my path, an adverse sign. Ah, whither did my tender longing then +flee? + +All loathing did I once vow to renounce: then did ye change my nigh ones +and nearest ones into ulcerations. Ah, whither did my noblest vow then +flee? + +As a blind one did I once walk in blessed ways: then did ye cast +filth on the blind one's course: and now is he disgusted with the old +footpath. + +And when I performed my hardest task, and celebrated the triumph of +my victories, then did ye make those who loved me call out that I then +grieved them most. + +Verily, it was always your doing: ye embittered to me my best honey, and +the diligence of my best bees. + +To my charity have ye ever sent the most impudent beggars; around my +sympathy have ye ever crowded the incurably shameless. Thus have ye +wounded the faith of my virtue. + +And when I offered my holiest as a sacrifice, immediately did your +"piety" put its fatter gifts beside it: so that my holiest suffocated in +the fumes of your fat. + +And once did I want to dance as I had never yet danced: beyond all +heavens did I want to dance. Then did ye seduce my favourite minstrel. + +And now hath he struck up an awful, melancholy air; alas, he tooted as a +mournful horn to mine ear! + +Murderous minstrel, instrument of evil, most innocent instrument! +Already did I stand prepared for the best dance: then didst thou slay my +rapture with thy tones! + +Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest +things:--and now hath my grandest parable remained unspoken in my limbs! + +Unspoken and unrealised hath my highest hope remained! And there have +perished for me all the visions and consolations of my youth! + +How did I ever bear it? How did I survive and surmount such wounds? How +did my soul rise again out of those sepulchres? + +Yea, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would +rend rocks asunder: it is called MY WILL. Silently doth it proceed, and +unchanged throughout the years. + +Its course will it go upon my feet, mine old Will; hard of heart is its +nature and invulnerable. + +Invulnerable am I only in my heel. Ever livest thou there, and art like +thyself, thou most patient one! Ever hast thou burst all shackles of the +tomb! + +In thee still liveth also the unrealisedness of my youth; and as life +and youth sittest thou here hopeful on the yellow ruins of graves. + +Yea, thou art still for me the demolisher of all graves: Hail to thee, +my Will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections.-- + +Thus sang Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXIV. SELF-SURPASSING. + +"Will to Truth" do ye call it, ye wisest ones, that which impelleth you +and maketh you ardent? + +Will for the thinkableness of all being: thus do _I_ call your will! + +All being would ye MAKE thinkable: for ye doubt with good reason whether +it be already thinkable. + +But it shall accommodate and bend itself to you! So willeth your will. +Smooth shall it become and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and +reflection. + +That is your entire will, ye wisest ones, as a Will to Power; and even +when ye speak of good and evil, and of estimates of value. + +Ye would still create a world before which ye can bow the knee: such is +your ultimate hope and ecstasy. + +The ignorant, to be sure, the people--they are like a river on which a +boat floateth along: and in the boat sit the estimates of value, solemn +and disguised. + +Your will and your valuations have ye put on the river of becoming; it +betrayeth unto me an old Will to Power, what is believed by the people +as good and evil. + +It was ye, ye wisest ones, who put such guests in this boat, and gave +them pomp and proud names--ye and your ruling Will! + +Onward the river now carrieth your boat: it MUST carry it. A small +matter if the rough wave foameth and angrily resisteth its keel! + +It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and +evil, ye wisest ones: but that Will itself, the Will to Power--the +unexhausted, procreating life-will. + +But that ye may understand my gospel of good and evil, for that purpose +will I tell you my gospel of life, and of the nature of all living +things. + +The living thing did I follow; I walked in the broadest and narrowest +paths to learn its nature. + +With a hundred-faced mirror did I catch its glance when its mouth was +shut, so that its eye might speak unto me. And its eye spake unto me. + +But wherever I found living things, there heard I also the language of +obedience. All living things are obeying things. + +And this heard I secondly: Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded. +Such is the nature of living things. + +This, however, is the third thing which I heard--namely, that commanding +is more difficult than obeying. And not only because the commander +beareth the burden of all obeyers, and because this burden readily +crusheth him:-- + +An attempt and a risk seemed all commanding unto me; and whenever it +commandeth, the living thing risketh itself thereby. + +Yea, even when it commandeth itself, then also must it atone for its +commanding. Of its own law must it become the judge and avenger and +victim. + +How doth this happen! so did I ask myself. What persuadeth the living +thing to obey, and command, and even be obedient in commanding? + +Hearken now unto my word, ye wisest ones! Test it seriously, whether +I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its +heart! + +Wherever I found a living thing, there found I Will to Power; and even +in the will of the servant found I the will to be master. + +That to the stronger the weaker shall serve--thereto persuadeth he his +will who would be master over a still weaker one. That delight alone he +is unwilling to forego. + +And as the lesser surrendereth himself to the greater that he may have +delight and power over the least of all, so doth even the greatest +surrender himself, and staketh--life, for the sake of power. + +It is the surrender of the greatest to run risk and danger, and play +dice for death. + +And where there is sacrifice and service and love-glances, there also +is the will to be master. By by-ways doth the weaker then slink into +the fortress, and into the heart of the mightier one--and there stealeth +power. + +And this secret spake Life herself unto me. "Behold," said she, "I am +that WHICH MUST EVER SURPASS ITSELF. + +To be sure, ye call it will to procreation, or impulse towards a goal, +towards the higher, remoter, more manifold: but all that is one and the +same secret. + +Rather would I succumb than disown this one thing; and verily, where +there is succumbing and leaf-falling, lo, there doth Life sacrifice +itself--for power! + +That I have to be struggle, and becoming, and purpose, and +cross-purpose--ah, he who divineth my will, divineth well also on what +CROOKED paths it hath to tread! + +Whatever I create, and however much I love it,--soon must I be adverse +to it, and to my love: so willeth my will. + +And even thou, discerning one, art only a path and footstep of my will: +verily, my Will to Power walketh even on the feet of thy Will to Truth! + +He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula: 'Will to +existence': that will--doth not exist! + +For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence--how +could it still strive for existence! + +Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to +Life, but--so teach I thee--Will to Power! + +Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one; but out of +the very reckoning speaketh--the Will to Power!"-- + +Thus did Life once teach me: and thereby, ye wisest ones, do I solve you +the riddle of your hearts. + +Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting--it +doth not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew. + +With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power, +ye valuing ones: and that is your secret love, and the sparkling, +trembling, and overflowing of your souls. + +But a stronger power groweth out of your values, and a new surpassing: +by it breaketh egg and egg-shell. + +And he who hath to be a creator in good and evil--verily, he hath first +to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces. + +Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good: that, however, +is the creating good.-- + +Let us SPEAK thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad. To be +silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous. + +And let everything break up which--can break up by our truths! Many a +house is still to be built!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXV. THE SUBLIME ONES. + +Calm is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hideth droll +monsters! + +Unmoved is my depth: but it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and +laughters. + +A sublime one saw I to-day, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: Oh, +how my soul laughed at his ugliness! + +With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their breath: thus did +he stand, the sublime one, and in silence: + +O'erhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn +raiment; many thorns also hung on him--but I saw no rose. + +Not yet had he learned laughing and beauty. Gloomy did this hunter +return from the forest of knowledge. + +From the fight with wild beasts returned he home: but even yet a wild +beast gazeth out of his seriousness--an unconquered wild beast! + +As a tiger doth he ever stand, on the point of springing; but I do not +like those strained souls; ungracious is my taste towards all those +self-engrossed ones. + +And ye tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and +tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting! + +Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas +for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and +scales and weigher! + +Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, then only +will his beauty begin--and then only will I taste him and find him +savoury. + +And only when he turneth away from himself will he o'erleap his own +shadow--and verily! into HIS sun. + +Far too long did he sit in the shade; the cheeks of the penitent of the +spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expectations. + +Contempt is still in his eye, and loathing hideth in his mouth. To be +sure, he now resteth, but he hath not yet taken rest in the sunshine. + +As the ox ought he to do; and his happiness should smell of the earth, +and not of contempt for the earth. + +As a white ox would I like to see him, which, snorting and lowing, +walketh before the plough-share: and his lowing should also laud all +that is earthly! + +Dark is still his countenance; the shadow of his hand danceth upon it. +O'ershadowed is still the sense of his eye. + +His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing obscureth the +doer. Not yet hath he overcome his deed. + +To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now do I want to +see also the eye of the angel. + +Also his hero-will hath he still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he +be, and not only a sublime one:--the ether itself should raise him, the +will-less one! + +He hath subdued monsters, he hath solved enigmas. But he should also +redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children should he +transform them. + +As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without +jealousy; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty. + +Verily, not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear, but in +beauty! Gracefulness belongeth to the munificence of the magnanimous. + +His arm across his head: thus should the hero repose; thus should he +also surmount his repose. + +But precisely to the hero is BEAUTY the hardest thing of all. +Unattainable is beauty by all ardent wills. + +A little more, a little less: precisely this is much here, it is the +most here. + +To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will: that is the +hardest for all of you, ye sublime ones! + +When power becometh gracious and descendeth into the visible--I call +such condescension, beauty. + +And from no one do I want beauty so much as from thee, thou powerful +one: let thy goodness be thy last self-conquest. + +All evil do I accredit to thee: therefore do I desire of thee the good. + +Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good +because they have crippled paws! + +The virtue of the pillar shalt thou strive after: more beautiful doth +it ever become, and more graceful--but internally harder and more +sustaining--the higher it riseth. + +Yea, thou sublime one, one day shalt thou also be beautiful, and hold up +the mirror to thine own beauty. + +Then will thy soul thrill with divine desires; and there will be +adoration even in thy vanity! + +For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero hath abandoned it, +then only approacheth it in dreams--the superhero.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXVI. THE LAND OF CULTURE. + +Too far did I fly into the future: a horror seized upon me. + +And when I looked around me, lo! there time was my sole contemporary. + +Then did I fly backwards, homewards--and always faster. Thus did I come +unto you, ye present-day men, and into the land of culture. + +For the first time brought I an eye to see you, and good desire: verily, +with longing in my heart did I come. + +But how did it turn out with me? Although so alarmed--I had yet to +laugh! Never did mine eye see anything so motley-coloured! + +I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled, and my heart as +well. "Here forsooth, is the home of all the paintpots,"--said I. + +With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs--so sat ye there to mine +astonishment, ye present-day men! + +And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colours, +and repeated it! + +Verily, ye could wear no better masks, ye present-day men, than your own +faces! Who could--RECOGNISE you! + +Written all over with the characters of the past, and these characters +also pencilled over with new characters--thus have ye concealed +yourselves well from all decipherers! + +And though one be a trier of the reins, who still believeth that ye have +reins! Out of colours ye seem to be baked, and out of glued scraps. + +All times and peoples gaze divers-coloured out of your veils; all +customs and beliefs speak divers-coloured out of your gestures. + +He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures, +would just have enough left to scare the crows. + +Verily, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked, and without +paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at me. + +Rather would I be a day-labourer in the nether-world, and among the +shades of the by-gone!--Fatter and fuller than ye, are forsooth the +nether-worldlings! + +This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure +you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men! + +All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds +shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your "reality." + +For thus speak ye: "Real are we wholly, and without faith and +superstition": thus do ye plume yourselves--alas! even without plumes! + +Indeed, how would ye be ABLE to believe, ye divers-coloured ones!--ye +who are pictures of all that hath ever been believed! + +Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of +all thought. UNTRUSTWORTHY ONES: thus do _I_ call you, ye real ones! + +All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams +and pratings of all periods were even realer than your awakeness! + +Unfruitful are ye: THEREFORE do ye lack belief. But he who had to +create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions--and +believed in believing!-- + +Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is YOUR +reality: "Everything deserveth to perish." + +Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your +ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof. + +Many a one hath said: "There hath surely a God filched something from +me secretly whilst I slept? Verily, enough to make a girl for himself +therefrom! + +"Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!" thus hath spoken many a present-day +man. + +Yea, ye are laughable unto me, ye present-day men! And especially when +ye marvel at yourselves! + +And woe unto me if I could not laugh at your marvelling, and had to +swallow all that is repugnant in your platters! + +As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to carry +what is heavy; and what matter if beetles and May-bugs also alight on my +load! + +Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from +you, ye present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.-- + +Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I +look out for fatherlands and motherlands. + +But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all cities, and +decamping at all gates. + +Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my +heart impelled me; and exiled am I from fatherlands and motherlands. + +Thus do I love only my CHILDREN'S LAND, the undiscovered in the remotest +sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search. + +Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers: +and unto all the future--for THIS present-day!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXVII. IMMACULATE PERCEPTION. + +When yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to bear a sun: +so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon. + +But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe in the +man in the moon than in the woman. + +To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller. +Verily, with a bad conscience doth he stalk over the roofs. + +For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the +earth, and all the joys of lovers. + +Nay, I like him not, that tom-cat on the roofs! Hateful unto me are all +that slink around half-closed windows! + +Piously and silently doth he stalk along on the star-carpets:--but I +like no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingleth. + +Every honest one's step speaketh; the cat however, stealeth along over +the ground. Lo! cat-like doth the moon come along, and dishonestly.-- + +This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto you, the +"pure discerners!" You do _I_ call--covetous ones! + +Also ye love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!--but +shame is in your love, and a bad conscience--ye are like the moon! + +To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but not your +bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you! + +And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and +goeth by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame. + +"That would be the highest thing for me"--so saith your lying spirit +unto itself--"to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, +with hanging-out tongue: + +To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed +of selfishness--cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated +moon-eyes! + +That would be the dearest thing to me"--thus doth the seduced one seduce +himself,--"to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye +only to feel its beauty. + +And this do I call IMMACULATE perception of all things: to want nothing +else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a +hundred facets."-- + +Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack innocence in +your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on that account! + +Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the +earth! + +Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who +seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the purest will. + +Where is beauty? Where I MUST WILL with my whole Will; where I will love +and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image. + +Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. Will to love: +that is to be ready also for death. Thus do I speak unto you cowards! + +But now doth your emasculated ogling profess to be "contemplation!" +And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened +"beautiful!" Oh, ye violators of noble names! + +But it shall be your curse, ye immaculate ones, ye pure discerners, that +ye shall never bring forth, even though ye lie broad and teeming on the +horizon! + +Verily, ye fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that +your heart overfloweth, ye cozeners? + +But MY words are poor, contemptible, stammering words: gladly do I pick +up what falleth from the table at your repasts. + +Yet still can I say therewith the truth--to dissemblers! Yea, my +fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall--tickle the noses of +dissemblers! + +Bad air is always about you and your repasts: your lascivious thoughts, +your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air! + +Dare only to believe in yourselves--in yourselves and in your inward +parts! He who doth not believe in himself always lieth. + +A God's mask have ye hung in front of you, ye "pure ones": into a God's +mask hath your execrable coiling snake crawled. + +Verily ye deceive, ye "contemplative ones!" Even Zarathustra was once +the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent's coil +with which it was stuffed. + +A God's soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games, ye pure +discerners! No better arts did I once dream of than your arts! + +Serpents' filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me: and that +a lizard's craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously. + +But I came NIGH unto you: then came to me the day,--and now cometh it to +you,--at an end is the moon's love affair! + +See there! Surprised and pale doth it stand--before the rosy dawn! + +For already she cometh, the glowing one,--HER love to the earth cometh! +Innocence and creative desire, is all solar love! + +See there, how she cometh impatiently over the sea! Do ye not feel the +thirst and the hot breath of her love? + +At the sea would she suck, and drink its depths to her height: now +riseth the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts. + +Kissed and sucked WOULD it be by the thirst of the sun; vapour WOULD it +become, and height, and path of light, and light itself! + +Verily, like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas. + +And this meaneth TO ME knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend--to my +height!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXVIII. SCHOLARS. + +When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my +head,--it ate, and said thereby: "Zarathustra is no longer a scholar." + +It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child told it to me. + +I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, +among thistles and red poppies. + +A scholar am I still to the children, and also to the thistles and red +poppies. Innocent are they, even in their wickedness. + +But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so willeth my lot--blessings +upon it! + +For this is the truth: I have departed from the house of the scholars, +and the door have I also slammed behind me. + +Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them have I got +the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-cracking. + +Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on +ox-skins than on their honours and dignities. + +I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought: often is it ready to +take away my breath. Then have I to go into the open air, and away from +all dusty rooms. + +But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything to be +merely spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burneth on the +steps. + +Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do +they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others have thought. + +Should one lay hold of them, then do they raise a dust like flour-sacks, +and involuntarily: but who would divine that their dust came from corn, +and from the yellow delight of the summer fields? + +When they give themselves out as wise, then do their petty sayings and +truths chill me: in their wisdom there is often an odour as if it came +from the swamp; and verily, I have even heard the frog croak in it! + +Clever are they--they have dexterous fingers: what doth MY simplicity +pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading and knitting and +weaving do their fingers understand: thus do they make the hose of the +spirit! + +Good clockworks are they: only be careful to wind them up properly! +Then do they indicate the hour without mistake, and make a modest noise +thereby. + +Like millstones do they work, and like pestles: throw only seed-corn +unto them!--they know well how to grind corn small, and make white dust +out of it. + +They keep a sharp eye on one another, and do not trust each other the +best. Ingenious in little artifices, they wait for those whose knowledge +walketh on lame feet,--like spiders do they wait. + +I saw them always prepare their poison with precaution; and always did +they put glass gloves on their fingers in doing so. + +They also know how to play with false dice; and so eagerly did I find +them playing, that they perspired thereby. + +We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more repugnant to +my taste than their falsehoods and false dice. + +And when I lived with them, then did I live above them. Therefore did +they take a dislike to me. + +They want to hear nothing of any one walking above their heads; and so +they put wood and earth and rubbish betwixt me and their heads. + +Thus did they deafen the sound of my tread: and least have I hitherto +been heard by the most learned. + +All mankind's faults and weaknesses did they put betwixt themselves and +me:--they call it "false ceiling" in their houses. + +But nevertheless I walk with my thoughts ABOVE their heads; and even +should I walk on mine own errors, still would I be above them and their +heads. + +For men are NOT equal: so speaketh justice. And what I will, THEY may +not will!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XXXIX. POETS. + +"Since I have known the body better"--said Zarathustra to one of his +disciples--"the spirit hath only been to me symbolically spirit; and all +the 'imperishable'--that is also but a simile." + +"So have I heard thee say once before," answered the disciple, "and then +thou addedst: 'But the poets lie too much.' Why didst thou say that the +poets lie too much?" + +"Why?" said Zarathustra. "Thou askest why? I do not belong to those who +may be asked after their Why. + +Is my experience but of yesterday? It is long ago that I experienced the +reasons for mine opinions. + +Should I not have to be a cask of memory, if I also wanted to have my +reasons with me? + +It is already too much for me even to retain mine opinions; and many a +bird flieth away. + +And sometimes, also, do I find a fugitive creature in my dovecote, which +is alien to me, and trembleth when I lay my hand upon it. + +But what did Zarathustra once say unto thee? That the poets lie too +much?--But Zarathustra also is a poet. + +Believest thou that he there spake the truth? Why dost thou believe it?" + +The disciple answered: "I believe in Zarathustra." But Zarathustra shook +his head and smiled.-- + +Belief doth not sanctify me, said he, least of all the belief in myself. + +But granting that some one did say in all seriousness that the poets lie +too much: he was right--WE do lie too much. + +We also know too little, and are bad learners: so we are obliged to lie. + +And which of us poets hath not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous +hotchpotch hath evolved in our cellars: many an indescribable thing hath +there been done. + +And because we know little, therefore are we pleased from the heart with +the poor in spirit, especially when they are young women! + +And even of those things are we desirous, which old women tell one +another in the evening. This do we call the eternally feminine in us. + +And as if there were a special secret access to knowledge, which CHOKETH +UP for those who learn anything, so do we believe in the people and in +their "wisdom." + +This, however, do all poets believe: that whoever pricketh up his ears +when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learneth something of the +things that are betwixt heaven and earth. + +And if there come unto them tender emotions, then do the poets always +think that nature herself is in love with them: + +And that she stealeth to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and +amorous flatteries: of this do they plume and pride themselves, before +all mortals! + +Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the +poets have dreamed! + +And especially ABOVE the heavens: for all Gods are poet-symbolisations, +poet-sophistications! + +Verily, ever are we drawn aloft--that is, to the realm of the clouds: +on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them Gods and +Supermen:-- + +Are not they light enough for those chairs!--all these Gods and +Supermen?-- + +Ah, how I am weary of all the inadequate that is insisted on as actual! +Ah, how I am weary of the poets! + +When Zarathustra so spake, his disciple resented it, but was silent. And +Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if +it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.-- + +I am of to-day and heretofore, said he thereupon; but something is in me +that is of the morrow, and the day following, and the hereafter. + +I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: superficial are +they all unto me, and shallow seas. + +They did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their feeling +did not reach to the bottom. + +Some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of tedium: these +have as yet been their best contemplation. + +Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seemeth to me all the +jingle-jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the +fervour of tones!-- + +They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddle their water that +it may seem deep. + +And fain would they thereby prove themselves reconcilers: but mediaries +and mixers are they unto me, and half-and-half, and impure!-- + +Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; +but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God. + +Thus did the sea give a stone to the hungry one. And they themselves may +well originate from the sea. + +Certainly, one findeth pearls in them: thereby they are the more like +hard molluscs. And instead of a soul, I have often found in them salt +slime. + +They have learned from the sea also its vanity: is not the sea the +peacock of peacocks? + +Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes doth it spread out its tail; +never doth it tire of its lace-fan of silver and silk. + +Disdainfully doth the buffalo glance thereat, nigh to the sand with its +soul, nigher still to the thicket, nighest, however, to the swamp. + +What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendour to it! This parable I speak +unto the poets. + +Verily, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a sea of +vanity! + +Spectators, seeketh the spirit of the poet--should they even be +buffaloes!-- + +But of this spirit became I weary; and I see the time coming when it +will become weary of itself. + +Yea, changed have I seen the poets, and their glance turned towards +themselves. + +Penitents of the spirit have I seen appearing; they grew out of the +poets.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XL. GREAT EVENTS. + +There is an isle in the sea--not far from the Happy Isles of +Zarathustra--on which a volcano ever smoketh; of which isle the people, +and especially the old women amongst them, say that it is placed as a +rock before the gate of the nether-world; but that through the volcano +itself the narrow way leadeth downwards which conducteth to this gate. + +Now about the time that Zarathustra sojourned on the Happy Isles, it +happened that a ship anchored at the isle on which standeth the smoking +mountain, and the crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. About the noontide +hour, however, when the captain and his men were together again, they +saw suddenly a man coming towards them through the air, and a voice said +distinctly: "It is time! It is the highest time!" But when the figure +was nearest to them (it flew past quickly, however, like a shadow, in +the direction of the volcano), then did they recognise with the greatest +surprise that it was Zarathustra; for they had all seen him before +except the captain himself, and they loved him as the people love: in +such wise that love and awe were combined in equal degree. + +"Behold!" said the old helmsman, "there goeth Zarathustra to hell!" + +About the same time that these sailors landed on the fire-isle, there +was a rumour that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when his friends were +asked about it, they said that he had gone on board a ship by night, +without saying whither he was going. + +Thus there arose some uneasiness. After three days, however, there came +the story of the ship's crew in addition to this uneasiness--and +then did all the people say that the devil had taken Zarathustra. His +disciples laughed, sure enough, at this talk; and one of them said even: +"Sooner would I believe that Zarathustra hath taken the devil." But at +the bottom of their hearts they were all full of anxiety and longing: so +their joy was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared amongst +them. + +And this is the account of Zarathustra's interview with the fire-dog: + +The earth, said he, hath a skin; and this skin hath diseases. One of +these diseases, for example, is called "man." + +And another of these diseases is called "the fire-dog": concerning HIM +men have greatly deceived themselves, and let themselves be deceived. + +To fathom this mystery did I go o'er the sea; and I have seen the truth +naked, verily! barefooted up to the neck. + +Now do I know how it is concerning the fire-dog; and likewise concerning +all the spouting and subversive devils, of which not only old women are +afraid. + +"Up with thee, fire-dog, out of thy depth!" cried I, "and confess how +deep that depth is! Whence cometh that which thou snortest up? + +Thou drinkest copiously at the sea: that doth thine embittered eloquence +betray! In sooth, for a dog of the depth, thou takest thy nourishment +too much from the surface! + +At the most, I regard thee as the ventriloquist of the earth: and ever, +when I have heard subversive and spouting devils speak, I have found +them like thee: embittered, mendacious, and shallow. + +Ye understand how to roar and obscure with ashes! Ye are the best +braggarts, and have sufficiently learned the art of making dregs boil. + +Where ye are, there must always be dregs at hand, and much that is +spongy, hollow, and compressed: it wanteth to have freedom. + +'Freedom' ye all roar most eagerly: but I have unlearned the belief in +'great events,' when there is much roaring and smoke about them. + +And believe me, friend Hullabaloo! The greatest events--are not our +noisiest, but our stillest hours. + +Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new +values, doth the world revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolveth. + +And just own to it! Little had ever taken place when thy noise and smoke +passed away. What, if a city did become a mummy, and a statue lay in the +mud! + +And this do I say also to the o'erthrowers of statues: It is certainly +the greatest folly to throw salt into the sea, and statues into the mud. + +In the mud of your contempt lay the statue: but it is just its law, that +out of contempt, its life and living beauty grow again! + +With diviner features doth it now arise, seducing by its suffering; and +verily! it will yet thank you for o'erthrowing it, ye subverters! + +This counsel, however, do I counsel to kings and churches, and to all +that is weak with age or virtue--let yourselves be o'erthrown! That ye +may again come to life, and that virtue--may come to you!--" + +Thus spake I before the fire-dog: then did he interrupt me sullenly, and +asked: "Church? What is that?" + +"Church?" answered I, "that is a kind of state, and indeed the most +mendacious. But remain quiet, thou dissembling dog! Thou surely knowest +thine own species best! + +Like thyself the state is a dissembling dog; like thee doth it like +to speak with smoke and roaring--to make believe, like thee, that it +speaketh out of the heart of things. + +For it seeketh by all means to be the most important creature on earth, +the state; and people think it so." + +When I had said this, the fire-dog acted as if mad with envy. "What!" +cried he, "the most important creature on earth? And people think it +so?" And so much vapour and terrible voices came out of his throat, that +I thought he would choke with vexation and envy. + +At last he became calmer and his panting subsided; as soon, however, as +he was quiet, I said laughingly: + +"Thou art angry, fire-dog: so I am in the right about thee! + +And that I may also maintain the right, hear the story of another +fire-dog; he speaketh actually out of the heart of the earth. + +Gold doth his breath exhale, and golden rain: so doth his heart desire. +What are ashes and smoke and hot dregs to him! + +Laughter flitteth from him like a variegated cloud; adverse is he to thy +gargling and spewing and grips in the bowels! + +The gold, however, and the laughter--these doth he take out of the heart +of the earth: for, that thou mayst know it,--THE HEART OF THE EARTH IS +OF GOLD." + +When the fire-dog heard this, he could no longer endure to listen to me. +Abashed did he draw in his tail, said "bow-wow!" in a cowed voice, and +crept down into his cave.-- + +Thus told Zarathustra. His disciples, however, hardly listened to him: +so great was their eagerness to tell him about the sailors, the rabbits, +and the flying man. + +"What am I to think of it!" said Zarathustra. "Am I indeed a ghost? + +But it may have been my shadow. Ye have surely heard something of the +Wanderer and his Shadow? + +One thing, however, is certain: I must keep a tighter hold of it; +otherwise it will spoil my reputation." + +And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered. "What am I to +think of it!" said he once more. + +"Why did the ghost cry: 'It is time! It is the highest time!' + +For WHAT is it then--the highest time?"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XLI. THE SOOTHSAYER. + +"-And I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best turned weary of +their works. + +A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it: 'All is empty, all is alike, +all hath been!' + +And from all hills there re-echoed: 'All is empty, all is alike, all +hath been!' + +To be sure we have harvested: but why have all our fruits become rotten +and brown? What was it fell last night from the evil moon? + +In vain was all our labour, poison hath our wine become, the evil eye +hath singed yellow our fields and hearts. + +Arid have we all become; and fire falling upon us, then do we turn dust +like ashes:--yea, the fire itself have we made aweary. + +All our fountains have dried up, even the sea hath receded. All the +ground trieth to gape, but the depth will not swallow! + +'Alas! where is there still a sea in which one could be drowned?' so +soundeth our plaint--across shallow swamps. + +Verily, even for dying have we become too weary; now do we keep awake +and live on--in sepulchres." + +Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the foreboding touched +his heart and transformed him. Sorrowfully did he go about and wearily; +and he became like unto those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.-- + +Verily, said he unto his disciples, a little while, and there cometh the +long twilight. Alas, how shall I preserve my light through it! + +That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! To remoter worlds shall +it be a light, and also to remotest nights! + +Thus did Zarathustra go about grieved in his heart, and for three days +he did not take any meat or drink: he had no rest, and lost his speech. +At last it came to pass that he fell into a deep sleep. His disciples, +however, sat around him in long night-watches, and waited anxiously to +see if he would awake, and speak again, and recover from his affliction. + +And this is the discourse that Zarathustra spake when he awoke; his +voice, however, came unto his disciples as from afar: + +Hear, I pray you, the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and help me to +divine its meaning! + +A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it +and encaged, and doth not yet fly above it on free pinions. + +All life had I renounced, so I dreamed. Night-watchman and +grave-guardian had I become, aloft, in the lone mountain-fortress of +Death. + +There did I guard his coffins: full stood the musty vaults of those +trophies of victory. Out of glass coffins did vanquished life gaze upon +me. + +The odour of dust-covered eternities did I breathe: sultry and +dust-covered lay my soul. And who could have aired his soul there! + +Brightness of midnight was ever around me; lonesomeness cowered beside +her; and as a third, death-rattle stillness, the worst of my female +friends. + +Keys did I carry, the rustiest of all keys; and I knew how to open with +them the most creaking of all gates. + +Like a bitterly angry croaking ran the sound through the long corridors +when the leaves of the gate opened: ungraciously did this bird cry, +unwillingly was it awakened. + +But more frightful even, and more heart-strangling was it, when it again +became silent and still all around, and I alone sat in that malignant +silence. + +Thus did time pass with me, and slip by, if time there still was: what +do I know thereof! But at last there happened that which awoke me. + +Thrice did there peal peals at the gate like thunders, thrice did the +vaults resound and howl again: then did I go to the gate. + +Alpa! cried I, who carrieth his ashes unto the mountain? Alpa! Alpa! who +carrieth his ashes unto the mountain? + +And I pressed the key, and pulled at the gate, and exerted myself. But +not a finger's-breadth was it yet open: + +Then did a roaring wind tear the folds apart: whistling, whizzing, and +piercing, it threw unto me a black coffin. + +And in the roaring, and whistling, and whizzing the coffin burst up, and +spouted out a thousand peals of laughter. + +And a thousand caricatures of children, angels, owls, fools, and +child-sized butterflies laughed and mocked, and roared at me. + +Fearfully was I terrified thereby: it prostrated me. And I cried with +horror as I ne'er cried before. + +But mine own crying awoke me:--and I came to myself.-- + +Thus did Zarathustra relate his dream, and then was silent: for as yet +he knew not the interpretation thereof. But the disciple whom he loved +most arose quickly, seized Zarathustra's hand, and said: + +"Thy life itself interpreteth unto us this dream, O Zarathustra! + +Art thou not thyself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursteth open +the gates of the fortress of Death? + +Art thou not thyself the coffin full of many-hued malices and +angel-caricatures of life? + +Verily, like a thousand peals of children's laughter cometh +Zarathustra into all sepulchres, laughing at those night-watchmen and +grave-guardians, and whoever else rattleth with sinister keys. + +With thy laughter wilt thou frighten and prostrate them: fainting and +recovering will demonstrate thy power over them. + +And when the long twilight cometh and the mortal weariness, even then +wilt thou not disappear from our firmament, thou advocate of life! + +New stars hast thou made us see, and new nocturnal glories: verily, +laughter itself hast thou spread out over us like a many-hued canopy. + +Now will children's laughter ever from coffins flow; now will a strong +wind ever come victoriously unto all mortal weariness: of this thou art +thyself the pledge and the prophet! + +Verily, THEY THEMSELVES DIDST THOU DREAM, thine enemies: that was thy +sorest dream. + +But as thou awokest from them and camest to thyself, so shall they +awaken from themselves--and come unto thee!" + +Thus spake the disciple; and all the others then thronged around +Zarathustra, grasped him by the hands, and tried to persuade him to +leave his bed and his sadness, and return unto them. Zarathustra, +however, sat upright on his couch, with an absent look. Like one +returning from long foreign sojourn did he look on his disciples, and +examined their features; but still he knew them not. When, however, they +raised him, and set him upon his feet, behold, all on a sudden his eye +changed; he understood everything that had happened, stroked his beard, +and said with a strong voice: + +"Well! this hath just its time; but see to it, my disciples, that we +have a good repast; and without delay! Thus do I mean to make amends for +bad dreams! + +The soothsayer, however, shall eat and drink at my side: and verily, I +will yet show him a sea in which he can drown himself!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he gaze long into the face of the +disciple who had been the dream-interpreter, and shook his head.-- + + + + +XLII. REDEMPTION. + +When Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then did the +cripples and beggars surround him, and a hunchback spake thus unto him: + +"Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from thee, and acquire faith +in thy teaching: but for them to believe fully in thee, one thing is +still needful--thou must first of all convince us cripples! Here hast +thou now a fine selection, and verily, an opportunity with more than one +forelock! The blind canst thou heal, and make the lame run; and from +him who hath too much behind, couldst thou well, also, take away a +little;--that, I think, would be the right method to make the cripples +believe in Zarathustra!" + +Zarathustra, however, answered thus unto him who so spake: When one +taketh his hump from the hunchback, then doth one take from him his +spirit--so do the people teach. And when one giveth the blind man eyes, +then doth he see too many bad things on the earth: so that he curseth +him who healed him. He, however, who maketh the lame man run, inflicteth +upon him the greatest injury; for hardly can he run, when his vices +run away with him--so do the people teach concerning cripples. And why +should not Zarathustra also learn from the people, when the people learn +from Zarathustra? + +It is, however, the smallest thing unto me since I have been amongst +men, to see one person lacking an eye, another an ear, and a third a +leg, and that others have lost the tongue, or the nose, or the head. + +I see and have seen worse things, and divers things so hideous, that I +should neither like to speak of all matters, nor even keep silent about +some of them: namely, men who lack everything, except that they have +too much of one thing--men who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big +mouth, or a big belly, or something else big,--reversed cripples, I call +such men. + +And when I came out of my solitude, and for the first time passed over +this bridge, then I could not trust mine eyes, but looked again and +again, and said at last: "That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!" I +looked still more attentively--and actually there did move under the ear +something that was pitiably small and poor and slim. And in truth this +immense ear was perched on a small thin stalk--the stalk, however, was a +man! A person putting a glass to his eyes, could even recognise further +a small envious countenance, and also that a bloated soullet dangled at +the stalk. The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a +man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the people when +they spake of great men--and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed +cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing. + +When Zarathustra had spoken thus unto the hunchback, and unto those of +whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to +his disciples in profound dejection, and said: + +Verily, my friends, I walk amongst men as amongst the fragments and +limbs of human beings! + +This is the terrible thing to mine eye, that I find man broken up, and +scattered about, as on a battle- and butcher-ground. + +And when mine eye fleeth from the present to the bygone, it findeth ever +the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances--but no men! + +The present and the bygone upon earth--ah! my friends--that is MY most +unbearable trouble; and I should not know how to live, if I were not a +seer of what is to come. + +A seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the +future--and alas! also as it were a cripple on this bridge: all that is +Zarathustra. + +And ye also asked yourselves often: "Who is Zarathustra to us? What +shall he be called by us?" And like me, did ye give yourselves questions +for answers. + +Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A +harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a healed one? + +Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good +one? Or an evil one? + +I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future: that future which I +contemplate. + +And it is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and collect into +unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance. + +And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, +and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance! + +To redeem what is past, and to transform every "It was" into "Thus would +I have it!"--that only do I call redemption! + +Will--so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught +you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a +prisoner. + +Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth the +emancipator in chains? + +"It was": thus is the Will's teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation +called. Impotent towards what hath been done--it is a malicious +spectator of all that is past. + +Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time's +desire--that is the Will's lonesomest tribulation. + +Willing emancipateth: what doth Willing itself devise in order to get +free from its tribulation and mock at its prison? + +Ah, a fool becometh every prisoner! Foolishly delivereth itself also the +imprisoned Will. + +That time doth not run backward--that is its animosity: "That which +was": so is the stone which it cannot roll called. + +And thus doth it roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and taketh +revenge on whatever doth not, like it, feel rage and ill-humour. + +Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and on all +that is capable of suffering it taketh revenge, because it cannot go +backward. + +This, yea, this alone is REVENGE itself: the Will's antipathy to time, +and its "It was." + +Verily, a great folly dwelleth in our Will; and it became a curse unto +all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit! + +THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE: my friends, that hath hitherto been man's best +contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was +always penalty. + +"Penalty," so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it feigneth a +good conscience. + +And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot +will backwards--thus was Willing itself, and all life, claimed--to be +penalty! + +And then did cloud after cloud roll over the spirit, until at last +madness preached: "Everything perisheth, therefore everything deserveth +to perish!" + +"And this itself is justice, the law of time--that he must devour his +children:" thus did madness preach. + +"Morally are things ordered according to justice and penalty. Oh, where +is there deliverance from the flux of things and from the 'existence' of +penalty?" Thus did madness preach. + +"Can there be deliverance when there is eternal justice? Alas, +unrollable is the stone, 'It was': eternal must also be all penalties!" +Thus did madness preach. + +"No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by the penalty! +This, this is what is eternal in the 'existence' of penalty, that +existence also must be eternally recurring deed and guilt! + +Unless the Will should at last deliver itself, and Willing become +non-Willing--:" but ye know, my brethren, this fabulous song of madness! + +Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you: "The +Will is a creator." + +All "It was" is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance--until the +creating Will saith thereto: "But thus would I have it."-- + +Until the creating Will saith thereto: "But thus do I will it! Thus +shall I will it!" + +But did it ever speak thus? And when doth this take place? Hath the Will +been unharnessed from its own folly? + +Hath the Will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer? Hath it +unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing? + +And who hath taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher +than all reconciliation? + +Something higher than all reconciliation must the Will will which is the +Will to Power--: but how doth that take place? Who hath taught it also +to will backwards? + +--But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zarathustra +suddenly paused, and looked like a person in the greatest alarm. With +terror in his eyes did he gaze on his disciples; his glances pierced as +with arrows their thoughts and arrear-thoughts. But after a brief space +he again laughed, and said soothedly: + +"It is difficult to live amongst men, because silence is so difficult-- +especially for a babbler."-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had listened to the +conversation and had covered his face during the time; but when he heard +Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity, and said slowly: + +"But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto us than unto his +disciples?" + +Zarathustra answered: "What is there to be wondered at! With hunchbacks +one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!" + +"Very good," said the hunchback; "and with pupils one may well tell +tales out of school. + +But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto his pupils--than unto +himself?"-- + + + + +XLIII. MANLY PRUDENCE. + +Not the height, it is the declivity that is terrible! + +The declivity, where the gaze shooteth DOWNWARDS, and the hand graspeth +UPWARDS. There doth the heart become giddy through its double will. + +Ah, friends, do ye divine also my heart's double will? + +This, this is MY declivity and my danger, that my gaze shooteth towards +the summit, and my hand would fain clutch and lean--on the depth! + +To man clingeth my will; with chains do I bind myself to man, because +I am pulled upwards to the Superman: for thither doth mine other will +tend. + +And THEREFORE do I live blindly among men, as if I knew them not: that +my hand may not entirely lose belief in firmness. + +I know not you men: this gloom and consolation is often spread around +me. + +I sit at the gateway for every rogue, and ask: Who wisheth to deceive +me? + +This is my first manly prudence, that I allow myself to be deceived, so +as not to be on my guard against deceivers. + +Ah, if I were on my guard against man, how could man be an anchor to my +ball! Too easily would I be pulled upwards and away! + +This providence is over my fate, that I have to be without foresight. + +And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of +all glasses; and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to +wash himself even with dirty water. + +And thus spake I often to myself for consolation: "Courage! Cheer up! +old heart! An unhappiness hath failed to befall thee: enjoy that as +thy--happiness!" + +This, however, is mine other manly prudence: I am more forbearing to the +VAIN than to the proud. + +Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? Where, however, pride +is wounded, there there groweth up something better than pride. + +That life may be fair to behold, its game must be well played; for that +purpose, however, it needeth good actors. + +Good actors have I found all the vain ones: they play, and wish people +to be fond of beholding them--all their spirit is in this wish. + +They represent themselves, they invent themselves; in their +neighbourhood I like to look upon life--it cureth of melancholy. + +Therefore am I forbearing to the vain, because they are the physicians +of my melancholy, and keep me attached to man as to a drama. + +And further, who conceiveth the full depth of the modesty of the vain +man! I am favourable to him, and sympathetic on account of his modesty. + +From you would he learn his belief in himself; he feedeth upon your +glances, he eateth praise out of your hands. + +Your lies doth he even believe when you lie favourably about him: for in +its depths sigheth his heart: "What am _I_?" + +And if that be the true virtue which is unconscious of itself--well, the +vain man is unconscious of his modesty!-- + +This is, however, my third manly prudence: I am not put out of conceit +with the WICKED by your timorousness. + +I am happy to see the marvels the warm sun hatcheth: tigers and palms +and rattle-snakes. + +Also amongst men there is a beautiful brood of the warm sun, and much +that is marvellous in the wicked. + +In truth, as your wisest did not seem to me so very wise, so found I +also human wickedness below the fame of it. + +And oft did I ask with a shake of the head: Why still rattle, ye +rattle-snakes? + +Verily, there is still a future even for evil! And the warmest south is +still undiscovered by man. + +How many things are now called the worst wickedness, which are only +twelve feet broad and three months long! Some day, however, will greater +dragons come into the world. + +For that the Superman may not lack his dragon, the superdragon that +is worthy of him, there must still much warm sun glow on moist virgin +forests! + +Out of your wild cats must tigers have evolved, and out of your +poison-toads, crocodiles: for the good hunter shall have a good hunt! + +And verily, ye good and just! In you there is much to be laughed at, and +especially your fear of what hath hitherto been called "the devil!" + +So alien are ye in your souls to what is great, that to you the Superman +would be FRIGHTFUL in his goodness! + +And ye wise and knowing ones, ye would flee from the solar-glow of the +wisdom in which the Superman joyfully batheth his nakedness! + +Ye highest men who have come within my ken! this is my doubt of you, and +my secret laughter: I suspect ye would call my Superman--a devil! + +Ah, I became tired of those highest and best ones: from their "height" +did I long to be up, out, and away to the Superman! + +A horror came over me when I saw those best ones naked: then there grew +for me the pinions to soar away into distant futures. + +Into more distant futures, into more southern souths than ever artist +dreamed of: thither, where Gods are ashamed of all clothes! + +But disguised do I want to see YOU, ye neighbours and fellowmen, and +well-attired and vain and estimable, as "the good and just;"-- + +And disguised will I myself sit amongst you--that I may MISTAKE you and +myself: for that is my last manly prudence.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XLIV. THE STILLEST HOUR. + +What hath happened unto me, my friends? Ye see me troubled, driven +forth, unwillingly obedient, ready to go--alas, to go away from YOU! + +Yea, once more must Zarathustra retire to his solitude: but unjoyously +this time doth the bear go back to his cave! + +What hath happened unto me? Who ordereth this?--Ah, mine angry mistress +wisheth it so; she spake unto me. Have I ever named her name to you? + +Yesterday towards evening there spake unto me MY STILLEST HOUR: that is +the name of my terrible mistress. + +And thus did it happen--for everything must I tell you, that your heart +may not harden against the suddenly departing one! + +Do ye know the terror of him who falleth asleep?-- + +To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground giveth way under +him, and the dream beginneth. + +This do I speak unto you in parable. Yesterday at the stillest hour did +the ground give way under me: the dream began. + +The hour-hand moved on, the timepiece of my life drew breath--never did +I hear such stillness around me, so that my heart was terrified. + +Then was there spoken unto me without voice: "THOU KNOWEST IT, +ZARATHUSTRA?"-- + +And I cried in terror at this whispering, and the blood left my face: +but I was silent. + +Then was there once more spoken unto me without voice: "Thou knowest it, +Zarathustra, but thou dost not speak it!"-- + +And at last I answered, like one defiant: "Yea, I know it, but I will +not speak it!" + +Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "Thou WILT not, +Zarathustra? Is this true? Conceal thyself not behind thy defiance!"-- + +And I wept and trembled like a child, and said: "Ah, I would indeed, but +how can I do it! Exempt me only from this! It is beyond my power!" + +Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What matter about +thyself, Zarathustra! Speak thy word, and succumb!" + +And I answered: "Ah, is it MY word? Who am _I_? I await the worthier +one; I am not worthy even to succumb by it." + +Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What matter about +thyself? Thou art not yet humble enough for me. Humility hath the +hardest skin."-- + +And I answered: "What hath not the skin of my humility endured! At the +foot of my height do I dwell: how high are my summits, no one hath yet +told me. But well do I know my valleys." + +Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "O Zarathustra, he +who hath to remove mountains removeth also valleys and plains."-- + +And I answered: "As yet hath my word not removed mountains, and what I +have spoken hath not reached man. I went, indeed, unto men, but not yet +have I attained unto them." + +Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What knowest thou +THEREOF! The dew falleth on the grass when the night is most silent."-- + +And I answered: "They mocked me when I found and walked in mine own +path; and certainly did my feet then tremble. + +And thus did they speak unto me: Thou forgottest the path before, now +dost thou also forget how to walk!" + +Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What matter about +their mockery! Thou art one who hast unlearned to obey: now shalt thou +command! + +Knowest thou not who is most needed by all? He who commandeth great +things. + +To execute great things is difficult: but the more difficult task is to +command great things. + +This is thy most unpardonable obstinacy: thou hast the power, and thou +wilt not rule."-- + +And I answered: "I lack the lion's voice for all commanding." + +Then was there again spoken unto me as a whispering: "It is the stillest +words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps +guide the world. + +O Zarathustra, thou shalt go as a shadow of that which is to come: thus +wilt thou command, and in commanding go foremost."-- + +And I answered: "I am ashamed." + +Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "Thou must yet become +a child, and be without shame. + +The pride of youth is still upon thee; late hast thou become young: but +he who would become a child must surmount even his youth."-- + +And I considered a long while, and trembled. At last, however, did I say +what I had said at first. "I will not." + +Then did a laughing take place all around me. Alas, how that laughing +lacerated my bowels and cut into my heart! + +And there was spoken unto me for the last time: "O Zarathustra, thy +fruits are ripe, but thou art not ripe for thy fruits! + +So must thou go again into solitude: for thou shalt yet become +mellow."-- + +And again was there a laughing, and it fled: then did it become still +around me, as with a double stillness. I lay, however, on the ground, +and the sweat flowed from my limbs. + +--Now have ye heard all, and why I have to return into my solitude. +Nothing have I kept hidden from you, my friends. + +But even this have ye heard from me, WHO is still the most reserved of +men--and will be so! + +Ah, my friends! I should have something more to say unto you! I should +have something more to give unto you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a +niggard?-- + +When, however, Zarathustra had spoken these words, the violence of his +pain, and a sense of the nearness of his departure from his friends came +over him, so that he wept aloud; and no one knew how to console him. In +the night, however, he went away alone and left his friends. + + + + + +THIRD PART. + +"Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation, and I look downward because +I am exalted. + +"Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? + +"He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays +and tragic realities."--ZARATHUSTRA, I., "Reading and Writing." + + + + +XLV. THE WANDERER. + +Then, when it was about midnight, Zarathustra went his way over the +ridge of the isle, that he might arrive early in the morning at the +other coast; because there he meant to embark. For there was a good +roadstead there, in which foreign ships also liked to anchor: those +ships took many people with them, who wished to cross over from the +Happy Isles. So when Zarathustra thus ascended the mountain, he thought +on the way of his many solitary wanderings from youth onwards, and how +many mountains and ridges and summits he had already climbed. + +I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not +the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still. + +And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience--a wandering +will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth +only oneself. + +The time is now past when accidents could befall me; and what COULD now +fall to my lot which would not already be mine own! + +It returneth only, it cometh home to me at last--mine own Self, and +such of it as hath been long abroad, and scattered among things and +accidents. + +And one thing more do I know: I stand now before my last summit, and +before that which hath been longest reserved for me. Ah, my hardest path +must I ascend! Ah, I have begun my lonesomest wandering! + +He, however, who is of my nature doth not avoid such an hour: the hour +that saith unto him: Now only dost thou go the way to thy greatness! +Summit and abyss--these are now comprised together! + +Thou goest the way to thy greatness: now hath it become thy last refuge, +what was hitherto thy last danger! + +Thou goest the way to thy greatness: it must now be thy best courage +that there is no longer any path behind thee! + +Thou goest the way to thy greatness: here shall no one steal after thee! +Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth +written: Impossibility. + +And if all ladders henceforth fail thee, then must thou learn to mount +upon thine own head: how couldst thou mount upward otherwise? + +Upon thine own head, and beyond thine own heart! Now must the gentlest +in thee become the hardest. + +He who hath always much-indulged himself, sickeneth at last by his +much-indulgence. Praises on what maketh hardy! I do not praise the land +where butter and honey--flow! + +To learn TO LOOK AWAY FROM oneself, is necessary in order to see MANY +THINGS:--this hardiness is needed by every mountain-climber. + +He, however, who is obtrusive with his eyes as a discerner, how can he +ever see more of anything than its foreground! + +But thou, O Zarathustra, wouldst view the ground of everything, and its +background: thus must thou mount even above thyself--up, upwards, until +thou hast even thy stars UNDER thee! + +Yea! To look down upon myself, and even upon my stars: that only would I +call my SUMMIT, that hath remained for me as my LAST summit!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra to himself while ascending, comforting his heart +with harsh maxims: for he was sore at heart as he had never been before. +And when he had reached the top of the mountain-ridge, behold, there +lay the other sea spread out before him: and he stood still and was +long silent. The night, however, was cold at this height, and clear and +starry. + +I recognise my destiny, said he at last, sadly. Well! I am ready. Now +hath my last lonesomeness begun. + +Ah, this sombre, sad sea, below me! Ah, this sombre nocturnal vexation! +Ah, fate and sea! To you must I now GO DOWN! + +Before my highest mountain do I stand, and before my longest wandering: +therefore must I first go deeper down than I ever ascended: + +--Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its darkest +flood! So willeth my fate. Well! I am ready. + +Whence come the highest mountains? so did I once ask. Then did I learn +that they come out of the sea. + +That testimony is inscribed on their stones, and on the walls of their +summits. Out of the deepest must the highest come to its height.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra on the ridge of the mountain where it was cold: +when, however, he came into the vicinity of the sea, and at last stood +alone amongst the cliffs, then had he become weary on his way, and +eagerer than ever before. + +Everything as yet sleepeth, said he; even the sea sleepeth. Drowsily and +strangely doth its eye gaze upon me. + +But it breatheth warmly--I feel it. And I feel also that it dreameth. It +tosseth about dreamily on hard pillows. + +Hark! Hark! How it groaneth with evil recollections! Or evil +expectations? + +Ah, I am sad along with thee, thou dusky monster, and angry with myself +even for thy sake. + +Ah, that my hand hath not strength enough! Gladly, indeed, would I free +thee from evil dreams!-- + +And while Zarathustra thus spake, he laughed at himself with melancholy +and bitterness. What! Zarathustra, said he, wilt thou even sing +consolation to the sea? + +Ah, thou amiable fool, Zarathustra, thou too-blindly confiding one! But +thus hast thou ever been: ever hast thou approached confidently all that +is terrible. + +Every monster wouldst thou caress. A whiff of warm breath, a little soft +tuft on its paw--: and immediately wert thou ready to love and lure it. + +LOVE is the danger of the lonesomest one, love to anything, IF IT ONLY +LIVE! Laughable, verily, is my folly and my modesty in love!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed thereby a second time. Then, +however, he thought of his abandoned friends--and as if he had done them +a wrong with his thoughts, he upbraided himself because of his thoughts. +And forthwith it came to pass that the laugher wept--with anger and +longing wept Zarathustra bitterly. + + + + +XLVI. THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA. + +1. + +When it got abroad among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board the +ship--for a man who came from the Happy Isles had gone on board along +with him,--there was great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra +kept silent for two days, and was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he +neither answered looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day, +however, he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent: for +there were many curious and dangerous things to be heard on board the +ship, which came from afar, and was to go still further. Zarathustra, +however, was fond of all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to +live without danger. And behold! when listening, his own tongue was +at last loosened, and the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to +speak thus: + +To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever hath embarked +with cunning sails upon frightful seas,-- + +To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose souls are +allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf: + +--For ye dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand; and where ye +can DIVINE, there do ye hate to CALCULATE-- + +To you only do I tell the enigma that I SAW--the vision of the +lonesomest one.-- + +Gloomily walked I lately in corpse-coloured twilight--gloomily and +sternly, with compressed lips. Not only one sun had set for me. + +A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil, lonesome path, +which neither herb nor shrub any longer cheered, a mountain-path, +crunched under the daring of my foot. + +Mutely marching over the scornful clinking of pebbles, trampling the +stone that let it slip: thus did my foot force its way upwards. + +Upwards:--in spite of the spirit that drew it downwards, towards the +abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch-enemy. + +Upwards:--although it sat upon me, half-dwarf, half-mole; paralysed, +paralysing; dripping lead in mine ear, and thoughts like drops of lead +into my brain. + +"O Zarathustra," it whispered scornfully, syllable by syllable, "thou +stone of wisdom! Thou threwest thyself high, but every thrown stone +must--fall! + +O Zarathustra, thou stone of wisdom, thou sling-stone, thou +star-destroyer! Thyself threwest thou so high,--but every thrown +stone--must fall! + +Condemned of thyself, and to thine own stoning: O Zarathustra, far +indeed threwest thou thy stone--but upon THYSELF will it recoil!" + +Then was the dwarf silent; and it lasted long. The silence, however, +oppressed me; and to be thus in pairs, one is verily lonesomer than when +alone! + +I ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought,--but everything oppressed +me. A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture wearieth, and a worse +dream reawakeneth out of his first sleep.-- + +But there is something in me which I call courage: it hath hitherto +slain for me every dejection. This courage at last bade me stand still +and say: "Dwarf! Thou! Or I!"-- + +For courage is the best slayer,--courage which ATTACKETH: for in every +attack there is sound of triumph. + +Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby hath he overcome +every animal. With sound of triumph hath he overcome every pain; human +pain, however, is the sorest pain. + +Courage slayeth also giddiness at abysses: and where doth man not stand +at abysses! Is not seeing itself--seeing abysses? + +Courage is the best slayer: courage slayeth also fellow-suffering. +Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man +looketh into life, so deeply also doth he look into suffering. + +Courage, however, is the best slayer, courage which attacketh: it +slayeth even death itself; for it saith: "WAS THAT life? Well! Once +more!" + +In such speech, however, there is much sound of triumph. He who hath +ears to hear, let him hear.-- + +2. + +"Halt, dwarf!" said I. "Either I--or thou! I, however, am the stronger +of the two:--thou knowest not mine abysmal thought! IT--couldst thou not +endure!" + +Then happened that which made me lighter: for the dwarf sprang from my +shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted on a stone in front of me. +There was however a gateway just where we halted. + +"Look at this gateway! Dwarf!" I continued, "it hath two faces. Two +roads come together here: these hath no one yet gone to the end of. + +This long lane backwards: it continueth for an eternity. And that long +lane forward--that is another eternity. + +They are antithetical to one another, these roads; they directly abut on +one another:--and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together. +The name of the gateway is inscribed above: 'This Moment.' + +But should one follow them further--and ever further and further +on, thinkest thou, dwarf, that these roads would be eternally +antithetical?"-- + +"Everything straight lieth," murmured the dwarf, contemptuously. "All +truth is crooked; time itself is a circle." + +"Thou spirit of gravity!" said I wrathfully, "do not take it too +lightly! Or I shall let thee squat where thou squattest, Haltfoot,--and +I carried thee HIGH!" + +"Observe," continued I, "This Moment! From the gateway, This Moment, +there runneth a long eternal lane BACKWARDS: behind us lieth an +eternity. + +Must not whatever CAN run its course of all things, have already run +along that lane? Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already +happened, resulted, and gone by? + +And if everything have already existed, what thinkest thou, dwarf, of +This Moment? Must not this gateway also--have already existed? + +And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This +Moment draweth all coming things after it? CONSEQUENTLY--itself also? + +For whatever CAN run its course of all things, also in this long lane +OUTWARD--MUST it once more run!-- + +And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight +itself, and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering +of eternal things--must we not all have already existed? + +--And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that +long weird lane--must we not eternally return?"-- + +Thus did I speak, and always more softly: for I was afraid of mine own +thoughts, and arrear-thoughts. Then, suddenly did I hear a dog HOWL near +me. + +Had I ever heard a dog howl thus? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was +a child, in my most distant childhood: + +--Then did I hear a dog howl thus. And saw it also, with hair bristling, +its head upwards, trembling in the stillest midnight, when even dogs +believe in ghosts: + +--So that it excited my commiseration. For just then went the full moon, +silent as death, over the house; just then did it stand still, a glowing +globe--at rest on the flat roof, as if on some one's property:-- + +Thereby had the dog been terrified: for dogs believe in thieves and +ghosts. And when I again heard such howling, then did it excite my +commiseration once more. + +Where was now the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the +whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I awakened? 'Twixt rugged rocks did I +suddenly stand alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight. + +BUT THERE LAY A MAN! And there! The dog leaping, bristling, whining--now +did it see me coming--then did it howl again, then did it CRY:--had I +ever heard a dog cry so for help? + +And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young shepherd did +I see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and +with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth. + +Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one countenance? +He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then had the serpent crawled into his +throat--there had it bitten itself fast. + +My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:--in vain! I failed to pull +the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: "Bite! Bite! + +Its head off! Bite!"--so cried it out of me; my horror, my hatred, my +loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of +me.-- + +Ye daring ones around me! Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever +of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! Ye +enigma-enjoyers! + +Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto me the +vision of the lonesomest one! + +For it was a vision and a foresight:--WHAT did I then behold in parable? +And WHO is it that must come some day? + +WHO is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? WHO is +the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl? + +--The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a +strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent--: and sprang +up.-- + +No longer shepherd, no longer man--a transfigured being, a +light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE +laughed! + +O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,--and now +gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed. + +My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure +to live! And how could I endure to die at present!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XLVII. INVOLUNTARY BLISS. + +With such enigmas and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra sail o'er +the sea. When, however, he was four day-journeys from the Happy +Isles and from his friends, then had he surmounted all his pain--: +triumphantly and with firm foot did he again accept his fate. And then +talked Zarathustra in this wise to his exulting conscience: + +Alone am I again, and like to be so, alone with the pure heaven, and the +open sea; and again is the afternoon around me. + +On an afternoon did I find my friends for the first time; on an +afternoon, also, did I find them a second time:--at the hour when all +light becometh stiller. + +For whatever happiness is still on its way 'twixt heaven and earth, now +seeketh for lodging a luminous soul: WITH HAPPINESS hath all light now +become stiller. + +O afternoon of my life! Once did my happiness also descend to the valley +that it might seek a lodging: then did it find those open hospitable +souls. + +O afternoon of my life! What did I not surrender that I might have +one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts, and this dawn of my +highest hope! + +Companions did the creating one once seek, and children of HIS hope: and +lo, it turned out that he could not find them, except he himself should +first create them. + +Thus am I in the midst of my work, to my children going, and from +them returning: for the sake of his children must Zarathustra perfect +himself. + +For in one's heart one loveth only one's child and one's work; and where +there is great love to oneself, then is it the sign of pregnancy: so +have I found it. + +Still are my children verdant in their first spring, standing nigh one +another, and shaken in common by the winds, the trees of my garden and +of my best soil. + +And verily, where such trees stand beside one another, there ARE Happy +Isles! + +But one day will I take them up, and put each by itself alone: that it +may learn lonesomeness and defiance and prudence. + +Gnarled and crooked and with flexible hardness shall it then stand by +the sea, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life. + +Yonder where the storms rush down into the sea, and the snout of the +mountain drinketh water, shall each on a time have his day and night +watches, for HIS testing and recognition. + +Recognised and tested shall each be, to see if he be of my type and +lineage:--if he be master of a long will, silent even when he speaketh, +and giving in such wise that he TAKETH in giving:-- + +--So that he may one day become my companion, a fellow-creator and +fellow-enjoyer with Zarathustra:--such a one as writeth my will on my +tables, for the fuller perfection of all things. + +And for his sake and for those like him, must I perfect MYSELF: +therefore do I now avoid my happiness, and present myself to every +misfortune--for MY final testing and recognition. + +And verily, it were time that I went away; and the wanderer's shadow and +the longest tedium and the stillest hour--have all said unto me: "It is +the highest time!" + +The word blew to me through the keyhole and said "Come!" The door sprang +subtlely open unto me, and said "Go!" + +But I lay enchained to my love for my children: desire spread this +snare for me--the desire for love--that I should become the prey of my +children, and lose myself in them. + +Desiring--that is now for me to have lost myself. I POSSESS YOU, MY +CHILDREN! In this possessing shall everything be assurance and nothing +desire. + +But brooding lay the sun of my love upon me, in his own juice stewed +Zarathustra,--then did shadows and doubts fly past me. + +For frost and winter I now longed: "Oh, that frost and winter would +again make me crack and crunch!" sighed I:--then arose icy mist out of +me. + +My past burst its tomb, many pains buried alive woke up--: fully slept +had they merely, concealed in corpse-clothes. + +So called everything unto me in signs: "It is time!" But I--heard not, +until at last mine abyss moved, and my thought bit me. + +Ah, abysmal thought, which art MY thought! When shall I find strength to +hear thee burrowing, and no longer tremble? + +To my very throat throbbeth my heart when I hear thee burrowing! Thy +muteness even is like to strangle me, thou abysmal mute one! + +As yet have I never ventured to call thee UP; it hath been enough that +I--have carried thee about with me! As yet have I not been strong +enough for my final lion-wantonness and playfulness. + +Sufficiently formidable unto me hath thy weight ever been: but one day +shall I yet find the strength and the lion's voice which will call thee +up! + +When I shall have surmounted myself therein, then will I surmount myself +also in that which is greater; and a VICTORY shall be the seal of my +perfection!-- + +Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flattereth me, +smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward do I gaze--, still see I no +end. + +As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me--or doth it +come to me perhaps just now? Verily, with insidious beauty do sea and +life gaze upon me round about: + +O afternoon of my life! O happiness before eventide! O haven upon high +seas! O peace in uncertainty! How I distrust all of you! + +Verily, distrustful am I of your insidious beauty! Like the lover am I, +who distrusteth too sleek smiling. + +As he pusheth the best-beloved before him--tender even in severity, the +jealous one--, so do I push this blissful hour before me. + +Away with thee, thou blissful hour! With thee hath there come to me an +involuntary bliss! Ready for my severest pain do I here stand:--at the +wrong time hast thou come! + +Away with thee, thou blissful hour! Rather harbour there--with my +children! Hasten! and bless them before eventide with MY happiness! + +There, already approacheth eventide: the sun sinketh. Away--my +happiness!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune the whole +night; but he waited in vain. The night remained clear and calm, and +happiness itself came nigher and nigher unto him. Towards morning, +however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart, and said mockingly: +"Happiness runneth after me. That is because I do not run after women. +Happiness, however, is a woman." + + + + +XLVIII. BEFORE SUNRISE. + +O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light! +Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires. + +Up to thy height to toss myself--that is MY depth! In thy purity to hide +myself--that is MINE innocence! + +The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars. Thou speakest +not: THUS proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me. + +Mute o'er the raging sea hast thou risen for me to-day; thy love and thy +modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul. + +In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that +thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom: + +Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul! BEFORE the +sun didst thou come unto me--the lonesomest one. + +We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness, +and ground common; even the sun is common to us. + +We do not speak to each other, because we know too much--: we keep +silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other. + +Art thou not the light of my fire? Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine +insight? + +Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond +ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:-- + +--Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of +distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like +rain. + +And wandered I alone, for WHAT did my soul hunger by night and in +labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if +not thee, upon mountains? + +And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely, +and a makeshift of the unhandy one:--to FLY only, wanteth mine entire +will, to fly into THEE! + +And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth +thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee! + +The passing clouds I detest--those stealthy cats of prey: they take +from thee and me what is common to us--the vast unbounded Yea- and +Amen-saying. + +These mediators and mixers we detest--the passing clouds: those +half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from +the heart. + +Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will I sit in +the abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous heaven, tainted +with passing clouds! + +And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold-wires of +lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their +kettle-bellies:-- + +--An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and Amen!--thou +heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of +light!--because they rob thee of MY Yea and Amen. + +For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this +discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men do I hate most +of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting, +hesitating, passing clouds. + +And "he who cannot bless shall LEARN to curse!"--this clear teaching +dropt unto me from the clear heaven; this star standeth in my heaven +even in dark nights. + +I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if thou be but around me, thou +pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!--into all abysses do I +then carry my beneficent Yea-saying. + +A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and therefore strove I long and +was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing. + +This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its own +heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed +is he who thus blesseth! + +For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and +evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and +damp afflictions and passing clouds. + +Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above +all things there standeth the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, +the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness." + +"Of Hazard"--that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave I back +to all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose. + +This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like an azure bell above +all things, when I taught that over them and through them, no "eternal +Will"--willeth. + +This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught +that "In everything there is one thing impossible--rationality!" + +A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to +star--this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom +is mixed in all things! + +A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I +found in all things, that they prefer--to DANCE on the feet of chance. + +O heaven above me! thou pure, thou lofty heaven! This is now thy purity +unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:-- + +--That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances, that thou art +to me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!-- + +But thou blushest? Have I spoken unspeakable things? Have I abused, when +I meant to bless thee? + +Or is it the shame of being two of us that maketh thee blush!--Dost thou +bid me go and be silent, because now--DAY cometh? + +The world is deep:--and deeper than e'er the day could read. Not +everything may be uttered in presence of day. But day cometh: so let us +part! + +O heaven above me, thou modest one! thou glowing one! O thou, my +happiness before sunrise! The day cometh: so let us part!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +XLIX. THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE. + +1. + +When Zarathustra was again on the continent, he did not go straightway +to his mountains and his cave, but made many wanderings and +questionings, and ascertained this and that; so that he said of himself +jestingly: "Lo, a river that floweth back unto its source in many +windings!" For he wanted to learn what had taken place AMONG MEN during +the interval: whether they had become greater or smaller. And once, when +he saw a row of new houses, he marvelled, and said: + +"What do these houses mean? Verily, no great soul put them up as its +simile! + +Did perhaps a silly child take them out of its toy-box? Would that +another child put them again into the box! + +And these rooms and chambers--can MEN go out and in there? They seem to +be made for silk dolls; or for dainty-eaters, who perhaps let others eat +with them." + +And Zarathustra stood still and meditated. At last he said sorrowfully: +"There hath EVERYTHING become smaller! + +Everywhere do I see lower doorways: he who is of MY type can still go +therethrough, but--he must stoop! + +Oh, when shall I arrive again at my home, where I shall no longer have +to stoop--shall no longer have to stoop BEFORE THE SMALL ONES!"--And +Zarathustra sighed, and gazed into the distance.-- + +The same day, however, he gave his discourse on the bedwarfing virtue. + +2. + +I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they do not forgive +me for not envying their virtues. + +They bite at me, because I say unto them that for small people, small +virtues are necessary--and because it is hard for me to understand that +small people are NECESSARY! + +Here am I still like a cock in a strange farm-yard, at which even the +hens peck: but on that account I am not unfriendly to the hens. + +I am courteous towards them, as towards all small annoyances; to be +prickly towards what is small, seemeth to me wisdom for hedgehogs. + +They all speak of me when they sit around their fire in the +evening--they speak of me, but no one thinketh--of me! + +This is the new stillness which I have experienced: their noise around +me spreadeth a mantle over my thoughts. + +They shout to one another: "What is this gloomy cloud about to do to us? +Let us see that it doth not bring a plague upon us!" + +And recently did a woman seize upon her child that was coming unto +me: "Take the children away," cried she, "such eyes scorch children's +souls." + +They cough when I speak: they think coughing an objection to strong +winds--they divine nothing of the boisterousness of my happiness! + +"We have not yet time for Zarathustra"--so they object; but what matter +about a time that "hath no time" for Zarathustra? + +And if they should altogether praise me, how could I go to sleep on +THEIR praise? A girdle of spines is their praise unto me: it scratcheth +me even when I take it off. + +And this also did I learn among them: the praiser doeth as if he gave +back; in truth, however, he wanteth more to be given him! + +Ask my foot if their lauding and luring strains please it! Verily, +to such measure and ticktack, it liketh neither to dance nor to stand +still. + +To small virtues would they fain lure and laud me; to the ticktack of +small happiness would they fain persuade my foot. + +I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open; they have become +SMALLER, and ever become smaller:--THE REASON THEREOF IS THEIR DOCTRINE +OF HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE. + +For they are moderate also in virtue,--because they want comfort. With +comfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible. + +To be sure, they also learn in their way to stride on and stride +forward: that, I call their HOBBLING.--Thereby they become a hindrance +to all who are in haste. + +And many of them go forward, and look backwards thereby, with stiffened +necks: those do I like to run up against. + +Foot and eye shall not lie, nor give the lie to each other. But there is +much lying among small people. + +Some of them WILL, but most of them are WILLED. Some of them are +genuine, but most of them are bad actors. + +There are actors without knowing it amongst them, and actors without +intending it--, the genuine ones are always rare, especially the genuine +actors. + +Of man there is little here: therefore do their women masculinise +themselves. For only he who is man enough, will--SAVE THE WOMAN in +woman. + +And this hypocrisy found I worst amongst them, that even those who +command feign the virtues of those who serve. + +"I serve, thou servest, we serve"--so chanteth here even the hypocrisy +of the rulers--and alas! if the first lord be ONLY the first servant! + +Ah, even upon their hypocrisy did mine eyes' curiosity alight; and well +did I divine all their fly-happiness, and their buzzing around sunny +window-panes. + +So much kindness, so much weakness do I see. So much justice and pity, +so much weakness. + +Round, fair, and considerate are they to one another, as grains of sand +are round, fair, and considerate to grains of sand. + +Modestly to embrace a small happiness--that do they call "submission"! +and at the same time they peer modestly after a new small happiness. + +In their hearts they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt +them. Thus do they anticipate every one's wishes and do well unto every +one. + +That, however, is COWARDICE, though it be called "virtue."-- + +And when they chance to speak harshly, those small people, then do _I_ +hear therein only their hoarseness--every draught of air maketh them +hoarse. + +Shrewd indeed are they, their virtues have shrewd fingers. But they lack +fists: their fingers do not know how to creep behind fists. + +Virtue for them is what maketh modest and tame: therewith have they made +the wolf a dog, and man himself man's best domestic animal. + +"We set our chair in the MIDST"--so saith their smirking unto me--"and +as far from dying gladiators as from satisfied swine." + +That, however, is--MEDIOCRITY, though it be called moderation.-- + +3. + +I pass through this people and let fall many words: but they know +neither how to take nor how to retain them. + +They wonder why I came not to revile venery and vice; and verily, I came +not to warn against pickpockets either! + +They wonder why I am not ready to abet and whet their wisdom: as if they +had not yet enough of wiseacres, whose voices grate on mine ear like +slate-pencils! + +And when I call out: "Curse all the cowardly devils in you, that +would fain whimper and fold the hands and adore"--then do they shout: +"Zarathustra is godless." + +And especially do their teachers of submission shout this;--but +precisely in their ears do I love to cry: "Yea! I AM Zarathustra, the +godless!" + +Those teachers of submission! Wherever there is aught puny, or sickly, +or scabby, there do they creep like lice; and only my disgust preventeth +me from cracking them. + +Well! This is my sermon for THEIR ears: I am Zarathustra the godless, +who saith: "Who is more godless than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?" + +I am Zarathustra the godless: where do I find mine equal? And all +those are mine equals who give unto themselves their Will, and divest +themselves of all submission. + +I am Zarathustra the godless! I cook every chance in MY pot. And only +when it hath been quite cooked do I welcome it as MY food. + +And verily, many a chance came imperiously unto me: but still more +imperiously did my WILL speak unto it,--then did it lie imploringly upon +its knees-- + +--Imploring that it might find home and heart with me, and saying +flatteringly: "See, O Zarathustra, how friend only cometh unto +friend!"-- + +But why talk I, when no one hath MINE ears! And so will I shout it out +unto all the winds: + +Ye ever become smaller, ye small people! Ye crumble away, ye comfortable +ones! Ye will yet perish-- + +--By your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your +many small submissions! + +Too tender, too yielding: so is your soil! But for a tree to become +GREAT, it seeketh to twine hard roots around hard rocks! + +Also what ye omit weaveth at the web of all the human future; even your +naught is a cobweb, and a spider that liveth on the blood of the future. + +And when ye take, then is it like stealing, ye small virtuous ones; +but even among knaves HONOUR saith that "one shall only steal when one +cannot rob." + +"It giveth itself"--that is also a doctrine of submission. But I say +unto you, ye comfortable ones, that IT TAKETH TO ITSELF, and will ever +take more and more from you! + +Ah, that ye would renounce all HALF-willing, and would decide for +idleness as ye decide for action! + +Ah, that ye understood my word: "Do ever what ye will--but first be such +as CAN WILL. + +Love ever your neighbour as yourselves--but first be such as LOVE +THEMSELVES-- + +--Such as love with great love, such as love with great contempt!" Thus +speaketh Zarathustra the godless.-- + +But why talk I, when no one hath MINE ears! It is still an hour too +early for me here. + +Mine own forerunner am I among this people, mine own cockcrow in dark +lanes. + +But THEIR hour cometh! And there cometh also mine! Hourly do they become +smaller, poorer, unfruitfuller,--poor herbs! poor earth! + +And SOON shall they stand before me like dry grass and prairie, and +verily, weary of themselves--and panting for FIRE, more than for water! + +O blessed hour of the lightning! O mystery before noontide!--Running +fires will I one day make of them, and heralds with flaming tongues:-- + +--Herald shall they one day with flaming tongues: It cometh, it is nigh, +THE GREAT NOONTIDE! + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +L. ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT. + +Winter, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my hands with his +friendly hand-shaking. + +I honour him, that bad guest, but gladly leave him alone. Gladly do I +run away from him; and when one runneth WELL, then one escapeth him! + +With warm feet and warm thoughts do I run where the wind is calm--to the +sunny corner of mine olive-mount. + +There do I laugh at my stern guest, and am still fond of him; because he +cleareth my house of flies, and quieteth many little noises. + +For he suffereth it not if a gnat wanteth to buzz, or even two of them; +also the lanes maketh he lonesome, so that the moonlight is afraid there +at night. + +A hard guest is he,--but I honour him, and do not worship, like the +tenderlings, the pot-bellied fire-idol. + +Better even a little teeth-chattering than idol-adoration!--so willeth +my nature. And especially have I a grudge against all ardent, steaming, +steamy fire-idols. + +Him whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer; better do I +now mock at mine enemies, and more heartily, when winter sitteth in my +house. + +Heartily, verily, even when I CREEP into bed--: there, still laugheth +and wantoneth my hidden happiness; even my deceptive dream laugheth. + +I, a--creeper? Never in my life did I creep before the powerful; and if +ever I lied, then did I lie out of love. Therefore am I glad even in my +winter-bed. + +A poor bed warmeth me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my +poverty. And in winter she is most faithful unto me. + +With a wickedness do I begin every day: I mock at the winter with a cold +bath: on that account grumbleth my stern house-mate. + +Also do I like to tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may finally let +the heavens emerge from ashy-grey twilight. + +For especially wicked am I in the morning: at the early hour when the +pail rattleth at the well, and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:-- + +Impatiently do I then wait, that the clear sky may finally dawn for me, +the snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the white-head,-- + +--The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifleth even its +sun! + +Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence? Or did it learn it +from me? Or hath each of us devised it himself? + +Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold,--all good roguish +things spring into existence for joy: how could they always do so--for +once only! + +A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look, like the +winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:-- + +--Like it to stifle one's sun, and one's inflexible solar will: verily, +this art and this winter-roguishness have I learnt WELL! + +My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not +to betray itself by silence. + +Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all +those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude. + +That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate +will--for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence. + +Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his +water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder. + +But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers: +precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish! + +But the clear, the honest, the transparent--these are for me the wisest +silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest +water doth not--betray it.-- + +Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above +me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness! + +And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold--lest my +soul should be ripped up? + +MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs--all those +enviers and injurers around me? + +Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls--how +COULD their envy endure my happiness! + +Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks--and NOT that my +mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it! + +They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and know NOT that I +also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds. + +They commiserate also my accidents and chances:--but MY word saith: +"Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is it as a little child!" + +How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it +accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling +snowflakes! + +--If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers +and injurers! + +--If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and +patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity! + +This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that it +CONCEALETH NOT its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth not its +chilblains either. + +To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it +is the flight FROM the sick ones. + +Let them HEAR me chattering and sighing with winter-cold, all those poor +squinting knaves around me! With such sighing and chattering do I flee +from their heated rooms. + +Let them sympathise with me and sigh with me on account of my +chilblains: "At the ice of knowledge will he yet FREEZE TO DEATH!"--so +they mourn. + +Meanwhile do I run with warm feet hither and thither on mine +olive-mount: in the sunny corner of mine olive-mount do I sing, and mock +at all pity.-- + +Thus sang Zarathustra. + + + + +LI. ON PASSING-BY. + +Thus slowly wandering through many peoples and divers cities, did +Zarathustra return by round-about roads to his mountains and his cave. +And behold, thereby came he unawares also to the gate of the GREAT CITY. +Here, however, a foaming fool, with extended hands, sprang forward to +him and stood in his way. It was the same fool whom the people called +"the ape of Zarathustra:" for he had learned from him something of the +expression and modulation of language, and perhaps liked also to borrow +from the store of his wisdom. And the fool talked thus to Zarathustra: + +O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here hast thou nothing to seek +and everything to lose. + +Why wouldst thou wade through this mire? Have pity upon thy foot! Spit +rather on the gate of the city, and--turn back! + +Here is the hell for anchorites' thoughts: here are great thoughts +seethed alive and boiled small. + +Here do all great sentiments decay: here may only rattle-boned +sensations rattle! + +Smellest thou not already the shambles and cookshops of the spirit? +Steameth not this city with the fumes of slaughtered spirit? + +Seest thou not the souls hanging like limp dirty rags?--And they make +newspapers also out of these rags! + +Hearest thou not how spirit hath here become a verbal game? Loathsome +verbal swill doth it vomit forth!--And they make newspapers also out of +this verbal swill. + +They hound one another, and know not whither! They inflame one another, +and know not why! They tinkle with their pinchbeck, they jingle with +their gold. + +They are cold, and seek warmth from distilled waters: they are inflamed, +and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and sore +through public opinion. + +All lusts and vices are here at home; but here there are also the +virtuous; there is much appointable appointed virtue:-- + +Much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers, and hardy sitting-flesh and +waiting-flesh, blessed with small breast-stars, and padded, haunchless +daughters. + +There is here also much piety, and much faithful spittle-licking and +spittle-backing, before the God of Hosts. + +"From on high," drippeth the star, and the gracious spittle; for the +high, longeth every starless bosom. + +The moon hath its court, and the court hath its moon-calves: unto all, +however, that cometh from the court do the mendicant people pray, and +all appointable mendicant virtues. + +"I serve, thou servest, we serve"--so prayeth all appointable virtue +to the prince: that the merited star may at last stick on the slender +breast! + +But the moon still revolveth around all that is earthly: so revolveth +also the prince around what is earthliest of all--that, however, is the +gold of the shopman. + +The God of the Hosts of war is not the God of the golden bar; the prince +proposeth, but the shopman--disposeth! + +By all that is luminous and strong and good in thee, O Zarathustra! Spit +on this city of shopmen and return back! + +Here floweth all blood putridly and tepidly and frothily through all +veins: spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the +scum frotheth together! + +Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, of pointed +eyes and sticky fingers-- + +--On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-demagogues and +tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambitious:-- + +Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful, over-mellow, +sickly-yellow and seditious, festereth pernicious:-- + +--Spit on the great city and turn back!-- + +Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his +mouth.-- + +Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have thy speech and thy +species disgusted me! + +Why didst thou live so long by the swamp, that thou thyself hadst to +become a frog and a toad? + +Floweth there not a tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in thine own veins, +when thou hast thus learned to croak and revile? + +Why wentest thou not into the forest? Or why didst thou not till the +ground? Is the sea not full of green islands? + +I despise thy contempt; and when thou warnedst me--why didst thou not +warn thyself? + +Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but +not out of the swamp!-- + +They call thee mine ape, thou foaming fool: but I call thee my +grunting-pig,--by thy grunting, thou spoilest even my praise of folly. + +What was it that first made thee grunt? Because no one sufficiently +FLATTERED thee:--therefore didst thou seat thyself beside this filth, +that thou mightest have cause for much grunting,-- + +--That thou mightest have cause for much VENGEANCE! For vengeance, thou +vain fool, is all thy foaming; I have divined thee well! + +But thy fools'-word injureth ME, even when thou art right! And even if +Zarathustra's word WERE a hundred times justified, thou wouldst ever--DO +wrong with my word! + +Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he look on the great city and sighed, +and was long silent. At last he spake thus: + +I loathe also this great city, and not only this fool. Here and there-- +there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen. + +Woe to this great city!--And I would that I already saw the pillar of +fire in which it will be consumed! + +For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. But this hath +its time and its own fate.-- + +This precept, however, give I unto thee, in parting, thou fool: Where +one can no longer love, there should one--PASS BY!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra, and passed by the fool and the great city. + + + + +LII. THE APOSTATES. + +1. + +Ah, lieth everything already withered and grey which but lately stood +green and many-hued on this meadow! And how much honey of hope did I +carry hence into my beehives! + +Those young hearts have already all become old--and not old even! only +weary, ordinary, comfortable:--they declare it: "We have again become +pious." + +Of late did I see them run forth at early morn with valorous steps: but +the feet of their knowledge became weary, and now do they malign even +their morning valour! + +Verily, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer; to them +winked the laughter of my wisdom:--then did they bethink themselves. +Just now have I seen them bent down--to creep to the cross. + +Around light and liberty did they once flutter like gnats and young +poets. A little older, a little colder: and already are they mystifiers, +and mumblers and mollycoddles. + +Did perhaps their hearts despond, because lonesomeness had swallowed me +like a whale? Did their ear perhaps hearken yearningly-long for me IN +VAIN, and for my trumpet-notes and herald-calls? + +--Ah! Ever are there but few of those whose hearts have persistent +courage and exuberance; and in such remaineth also the spirit patient. +The rest, however, are COWARDLY. + +The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the +superfluous, the far-too many--those all are cowardly!-- + +Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type meet on the +way: so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons. + +His second companions, however--they will call themselves his +BELIEVERS,--will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much +unbearded veneration. + +To those believers shall he who is of my type among men not bind his +heart; in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe, +who knoweth the fickly faint-hearted human species! + +COULD they do otherwise, then would they also WILL otherwise. The +half-and-half spoil every whole. That leaves become withered,--what is +there to lament about that! + +Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not lament! Better even +to blow amongst them with rustling winds,-- + +--Blow amongst those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything WITHERED may +run away from thee the faster!-- + +2. + +"We have again become pious"--so do those apostates confess; and some of +them are still too pusillanimous thus to confess. + +Unto them I look into the eye,--before them I say it unto their face and +unto the blush on their cheeks: Ye are those who again PRAY! + +It is however a shame to pray! Not for all, but for thee, and me, and +whoever hath his conscience in his head. For THEE it is a shame to pray! + +Thou knowest it well: the faint-hearted devil in thee, which would +fain fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it +easier:--this faint-hearted devil persuadeth thee that "there IS a God!" + +THEREBY, however, dost thou belong to the light-dreading type, to whom +light never permitteth repose: now must thou daily thrust thy head +deeper into obscurity and vapour! + +And verily, thou choosest the hour well: for just now do the nocturnal +birds again fly abroad. The hour hath come for all light-dreading +people, the vesper hour and leisure hour, when they do not--"take +leisure." + +I hear it and smell it: it hath come--their hour for hunt and +procession, not indeed for a wild hunt, but for a tame, lame, snuffling, +soft-treaders', soft-prayers' hunt,-- + +--For a hunt after susceptible simpletons: all mouse-traps for the heart +have again been set! And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rusheth +out of it. + +Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth? For everywhere +do I smell small concealed communities; and wherever there are closets +there are new devotees therein, and the atmosphere of devotees. + +They sit for long evenings beside one another, and say: "Let us again +become like little children and say, 'good God!'"--ruined in mouths and +stomachs by the pious confectioners. + +Or they look for long evenings at a crafty, lurking cross-spider, that +preacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and teacheth that "under +crosses it is good for cobweb-spinning!" + +Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that account think +themselves PROFOUND; but whoever fisheth where there are no fish, I do +not even call him superficial! + +Or they learn in godly-gay style to play the harp with a hymn-poet, +who would fain harp himself into the heart of young girls:--for he hath +tired of old girls and their praises. + +Or they learn to shudder with a learned semi-madcap, who waiteth in +darkened rooms for spirits to come to him--and the spirit runneth away +entirely! + +Or they listen to an old roving howl-and growl-piper, who hath learnt +from the sad winds the sadness of sounds; now pipeth he as the wind, and +preacheth sadness in sad strains. + +And some of them have even become night-watchmen: they know now how to +blow horns, and go about at night and awaken old things which have long +fallen asleep. + +Five words about old things did I hear yester-night at the garden-wall: +they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-watchmen. + +"For a father he careth not sufficiently for his children: human fathers +do this better!"-- + +"He is too old! He now careth no more for his children,"--answered the +other night-watchman. + +"HATH he then children? No one can prove it unless he himself prove it! +I have long wished that he would for once prove it thoroughly." + +"Prove? As if HE had ever proved anything! Proving is difficult to him; +he layeth great stress on one's BELIEVING him." + +"Ay! Ay! Belief saveth him; belief in him. That is the way with old +people! So it is with us also!"-- + +--Thus spake to each other the two old night-watchmen and light-scarers, +and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their horns: so did it happen +yester-night at the garden-wall. + +To me, however, did the heart writhe with laughter, and was like to +break; it knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff. + +Verily, it will be my death yet--to choke with laughter when I see asses +drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God. + +Hath the time not LONG since passed for all such doubts? Who may +nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things! + +With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end:--and verily, a +good joyful Deity-end had they! + +They did not "begloom" themselves to death--that do people fabricate! On +the contrary, they--LAUGHED themselves to death once on a time! + +That took place when the unGodliest utterance came from a God +himself--the utterance: "There is but one God! Thou shalt have no other +Gods before me!"-- + +--An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself in such +wise:-- + +And all the Gods then laughed, and shook upon their thrones, and +exclaimed: "Is it not just divinity that there are Gods, but no God?" + +He that hath an ear let him hear.-- + +Thus talked Zarathustra in the city he loved, which is surnamed "The +Pied Cow." For from here he had but two days to travel to reach once +more his cave and his animals; his soul, however, rejoiced unceasingly +on account of the nighness of his return home. + + + + +LIII. THE RETURN HOME. + +O lonesomeness! My HOME, lonesomeness! Too long have I lived wildly in +wild remoteness, to return to thee without tears! + +Now threaten me with the finger as mothers threaten; now smile upon me +as mothers smile; now say just: "Who was it that like a whirlwind once +rushed away from me?-- + +--Who when departing called out: 'Too long have I sat with lonesomeness; +there have I unlearned silence!' THAT hast thou learned now--surely? + +O Zarathustra, everything do I know; and that thou wert MORE FORSAKEN +amongst the many, thou unique one, than thou ever wert with me! + +One thing is forsakenness, another matter is lonesomeness: THAT hast +thou now learned! And that amongst men thou wilt ever be wild and +strange: + +--Wild and strange even when they love thee: for above all they want to +be TREATED INDULGENTLY! + +Here, however, art thou at home and house with thyself; here canst thou +utter everything, and unbosom all motives; nothing is here ashamed of +concealed, congealed feelings. + +Here do all things come caressingly to thy talk and flatter thee: for +they want to ride upon thy back. On every simile dost thou here ride to +every truth. + +Uprightly and openly mayest thou here talk to all things: and verily, +it soundeth as praise in their ears, for one to talk to all +things--directly! + +Another matter, however, is forsakenness. For, dost thou remember, O +Zarathustra? When thy bird screamed overhead, when thou stoodest in the +forest, irresolute, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse:-- + +--When thou spakest: 'Let mine animals lead me! More dangerous have I +found it among men than among animals:'--THAT was forsakenness! + +And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thou sattest in thine isle, +a well of wine giving and granting amongst empty buckets, bestowing and +distributing amongst the thirsty: + +--Until at last thou alone sattest thirsty amongst the drunken ones, and +wailedst nightly: 'Is taking not more blessed than giving? And stealing +yet more blessed than taking?'--THAT was forsakenness! + +And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thy stillest hour came and +drove thee forth from thyself, when with wicked whispering it said: +'Speak and succumb!'-- + +--When it disgusted thee with all thy waiting and silence, and +discouraged thy humble courage: THAT was forsakenness!"-- + +O lonesomeness! My home, lonesomeness! How blessedly and tenderly +speaketh thy voice unto me! + +We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other; we go +together openly through open doors. + +For all is open with thee and clear; and even the hours run here on +lighter feet. For in the dark, time weigheth heavier upon one than in +the light. + +Here fly open unto me all being's words and word-cabinets: here all +being wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of me +how to talk. + +Down there, however--all talking is in vain! There, forgetting and +passing-by are the best wisdom: THAT have I learned now! + +He who would understand everything in man must handle everything. But +for that I have too clean hands. + +I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have lived so +long among their noise and bad breaths! + +O blessed stillness around me! O pure odours around me! How from a deep +breast this stillness fetcheth pure breath! How it hearkeneth, this +blessed stillness! + +But down there--there speaketh everything, there is everything misheard. +If one announce one's wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place +will out-jingle it with pennies! + +Everything among them talketh; no one knoweth any longer how to +understand. Everything falleth into the water; nothing falleth any +longer into deep wells. + +Everything among them talketh, nothing succeedeth any longer and +accomplisheth itself. Everything cackleth, but who will still sit +quietly on the nest and hatch eggs? + +Everything among them talketh, everything is out-talked. And that which +yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth, hangeth +to-day, outchamped and outchewed, from the mouths of the men of to-day. + +Everything among them talketh, everything is betrayed. And what was once +called the secret and secrecy of profound souls, belongeth to-day to the +street-trumpeters and other butterflies. + +O human hubbub, thou wonderful thing! Thou noise in dark streets! Now +art thou again behind me:--my greatest danger lieth behind me! + +In indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and all human +hubbub wisheth to be indulged and tolerated. + +With suppressed truths, with fool's hand and befooled heart, and rich in +petty lies of pity:--thus have I ever lived among men. + +Disguised did I sit amongst them, ready to misjudge MYSELF that I might +endure THEM, and willingly saying to myself: "Thou fool, thou dost not +know men!" + +One unlearneth men when one liveth amongst them: there is too much +foreground in all men--what can far-seeing, far-longing eyes do THERE! + +And, fool that I was, when they misjudged me, I indulged them on that +account more than myself, being habitually hard on myself, and often +even taking revenge on myself for the indulgence. + +Stung all over by poisonous flies, and hollowed like the stone by +many drops of wickedness: thus did I sit among them, and still said to +myself: "Innocent is everything petty of its pettiness!" + +Especially did I find those who call themselves "the good," the most +poisonous flies; they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence; +how COULD they--be just towards me! + +He who liveth amongst the good--pity teacheth him to lie. Pity maketh +stifling air for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is +unfathomable. + +To conceal myself and my riches--THAT did I learn down there: for every +one did I still find poor in spirit. It was the lie of my pity, that I +knew in every one, + +--That I saw and scented in every one, what was ENOUGH of spirit for +him, and what was TOO MUCH! + +Their stiff wise men: I call them wise, not stiff--thus did I learn to +slur over words. + +The grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. Under old rubbish rest +bad vapours. One should not stir up the marsh. One should live on +mountains. + +With blessed nostrils do I again breathe mountain-freedom. Freed at last +is my nose from the smell of all human hubbub! + +With sharp breezes tickled, as with sparkling wine, SNEEZETH my soul-- +sneezeth, and shouteth self-congratulatingly: "Health to thee!" + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LIV. THE THREE EVIL THINGS. + +1. + +In my dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood to-day on a promontory-- +beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and WEIGHED the world. + +Alas, that the rosy dawn came too early to me: she glowed me awake, the +jealous one! Jealous is she always of the glows of my morning-dream. + +Measurable by him who hath time, weighable by a good weigher, attainable +by strong pinions, divinable by divine nut-crackers: thus did my dream +find the world:-- + +My dream, a bold sailor, half-ship, half-hurricane, silent as the +butterfly, impatient as the falcon: how had it the patience and leisure +to-day for world-weighing! + +Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wide-awake +day-wisdom, which mocketh at all "infinite worlds"? For it saith: "Where +force is, there becometh NUMBER the master: it hath more force." + +How confidently did my dream contemplate this finite world, not +new-fangledly, not old-fangledly, not timidly, not entreatingly:-- + +--As if a big round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe golden +apple, with a coolly-soft, velvety skin:--thus did the world present +itself unto me:-- + +--As if a tree nodded unto me, a broad-branched, strong-willed tree, +curved as a recline and a foot-stool for weary travellers: thus did the +world stand on my promontory:-- + +--As if delicate hands carried a casket towards me--a casket open for +the delectation of modest adoring eyes: thus did the world present +itself before me to-day:-- + +--Not riddle enough to scare human love from it, not solution enough +to put to sleep human wisdom:--a humanly good thing was the world to me +to-day, of which such bad things are said! + +How I thank my morning-dream that I thus at to-day's dawn, weighed +the world! As a humanly good thing did it come unto me, this dream and +heart-comforter! + +And that I may do the like by day, and imitate and copy its best, now +will I put the three worst things on the scales, and weigh them humanly +well.-- + +He who taught to bless taught also to curse: what are the three best +cursed things in the world? These will I put on the scales. + +VOLUPTUOUSNESS, PASSION FOR POWER, and SELFISHNESS: these three things +have hitherto been best cursed, and have been in worst and falsest +repute--these three things will I weigh humanly well. + +Well! Here is my promontory, and there is the sea--IT rolleth hither +unto me, shaggily and fawningly, the old, faithful, hundred-headed +dog-monster that I love!-- + +Well! Here will I hold the scales over the weltering sea: and also a +witness do I choose to look on--thee, the anchorite-tree, thee, the +strong-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!-- + +On what bridge goeth the now to the hereafter? By what constraint doth +the high stoop to the low? And what enjoineth even the highest still--to +grow upwards?-- + +Now stand the scales poised and at rest: three heavy questions have I +thrown in; three heavy answers carrieth the other scale. + +2. + +Voluptuousness: unto all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a sting and +stake; and, cursed as "the world," by all backworldsmen: for it mocketh +and befooleth all erring, misinferring teachers. + +Voluptuousness: to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is burnt; +to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew +furnace. + +Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the +garden-happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks-overflow to the +present. + +Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed, +however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines. + +Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness +and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than +marriage,-- + +--To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman:--and +who hath fully understood HOW UNKNOWN to each other are man and woman! + +Voluptuousness:--but I will have hedges around my thoughts, and +even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my +gardens!-- + +Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard; +the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy +flame of living pyres. + +Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted on the vainest +peoples; the scorner of all uncertain virtue; which rideth on every +horse and on every pride. + +Passion for power: the earthquake which breaketh and upbreaketh all +that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher +of whited sepulchres; the flashing interrogative-sign beside premature +answers. + +Passion for power: before whose glance man creepeth and croucheth and +drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent and the swine:--until at +last great contempt crieth out of him--, + +Passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which +preacheth to their face to cities and empires: "Away with thee!"--until +a voice crieth out of themselves: "Away with ME!" + +Passion for power: which, however, mounteth alluringly even to the pure +and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied elevations, glowing like a love +that painteth purple felicities alluringly on earthly heavens. + +Passion for power: but who would call it PASSION, when the height +longeth to stoop for power! Verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in +such longing and descending! + +That the lonesome height may not for ever remain lonesome and +self-sufficing; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds +of the heights to the plains:-- + +Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name for such +longing! "Bestowing virtue"--thus did Zarathustra once name the +unnamable. + +And then it happened also,--and verily, it happened for the first +time!--that his word blessed SELFISHNESS, the wholesome, healthy +selfishness, that springeth from the powerful soul:-- + +--From the powerful soul, to which the high body appertaineth, the +handsome, triumphing, refreshing body, around which everything becometh +a mirror: + +--The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome +is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment +calleth itself "virtue." + +With its words of good and bad doth such self-enjoyment shelter itself +as with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness doth it banish +from itself everything contemptible. + +Away from itself doth it banish everything cowardly; it saith: +"Bad--THAT IS cowardly!" Contemptible seem to it the ever-solicitous, +the sighing, the complaining, and whoever pick up the most trifling +advantage. + +It despiseth also all bitter-sweet wisdom: for verily, there is also +wisdom that bloometh in the dark, a night-shade wisdom, which ever +sigheth: "All is vain!" + +Shy distrust is regarded by it as base, and every one who wanteth oaths +instead of looks and hands: also all over-distrustful wisdom,--for such +is the mode of cowardly souls. + +Baser still it regardeth the obsequious, doggish one, who immediately +lieth on his back, the submissive one; and there is also wisdom that is +submissive, and doggish, and pious, and obsequious. + +Hateful to it altogether, and a loathing, is he who will never defend +himself, he who swalloweth down poisonous spittle and bad looks, the +all-too-patient one, the all-endurer, the all-satisfied one: for that is +the mode of slaves. + +Whether they be servile before Gods and divine spurnings, or before men +and stupid human opinions: at ALL kinds of slaves doth it spit, this +blessed selfishness! + +Bad: thus doth it call all that is spirit-broken, and +sordidly-servile--constrained, blinking eyes, depressed hearts, and the +false submissive style, which kisseth with broad cowardly lips. + +And spurious wisdom: so doth it call all the wit that slaves, and +hoary-headed and weary ones affect; and especially all the cunning, +spurious-witted, curious-witted foolishness of priests! + +The spurious wise, however, all the priests, the world-weary, and those +whose souls are of feminine and servile nature--oh, how hath their game +all along abused selfishness! + +And precisely THAT was to be virtue and was to be called virtue--to +abuse selfishness! And "selfless"--so did they wish themselves with good +reason, all those world-weary cowards and cross-spiders! + +But to all those cometh now the day, the change, the sword of judgment, +THE GREAT NOONTIDE: then shall many things be revealed! + +And he who proclaimeth the EGO wholesome and holy, and selfishness +blessed, verily, he, the prognosticator, speaketh also what he knoweth: +"BEHOLD, IT COMETH, IT IS NIGH, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!" + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LV. THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY. + +1. + +My mouthpiece--is of the people: too coarsely and cordially do I +talk for Angora rabbits. And still stranger soundeth my word unto all +ink-fish and pen-foxes. + +My hand--is a fool's hand: woe unto all tables and walls, and whatever +hath room for fool's sketching, fool's scrawling! + +My foot--is a horse-foot; therewith do I trample and trot over stick and +stone, in the fields up and down, and am bedevilled with delight in all +fast racing. + +My stomach--is surely an eagle's stomach? For it preferreth lamb's +flesh. Certainly it is a bird's stomach. + +Nourished with innocent things, and with few, ready and impatient +to fly, to fly away--that is now my nature: why should there not be +something of bird-nature therein! + +And especially that I am hostile to the spirit of gravity, that is +bird-nature:--verily, deadly hostile, supremely hostile, originally +hostile! Oh, whither hath my hostility not flown and misflown! + +Thereof could I sing a song--and WILL sing it: though I be alone in an +empty house, and must sing it to mine own ears. + +Other singers are there, to be sure, to whom only the full house +maketh the voice soft, the hand eloquent, the eye expressive, the heart +wakeful:--those do I not resemble.-- + +2. + +He who one day teacheth men to fly will have shifted all landmarks; to +him will all landmarks themselves fly into the air; the earth will he +christen anew--as "the light body." + +The ostrich runneth faster than the fastest horse, but it also thrusteth +its head heavily into the heavy earth: thus is it with the man who +cannot yet fly. + +Heavy unto him are earth and life, and so WILLETH the spirit of gravity! +But he who would become light, and be a bird, must love himself:--thus +do _I_ teach. + +Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected, for with them +stinketh even self-love! + +One must learn to love oneself--thus do I teach--with a wholesome and +healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving +about. + +Such roving about christeneth itself "brotherly love"; with these words +hath there hitherto been the best lying and dissembling, and especially +by those who have been burdensome to every one. + +And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to LEARN to +love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last and +patientest. + +For to its possessor is all possession well concealed, and of all +treasure-pits one's own is last excavated--so causeth the spirit of +gravity. + +Almost in the cradle are we apportioned with heavy words and worths: +"good" and "evil"--so calleth itself this dowry. For the sake of it we +are forgiven for living. + +And therefore suffereth one little children to come unto one, to forbid +them betimes to love themselves--so causeth the spirit of gravity. + +And we--we bear loyally what is apportioned unto us, on hard shoulders, +over rugged mountains! And when we sweat, then do people say to us: +"Yea, life is hard to bear!" + +But man himself only is hard to bear! The reason thereof is that he +carrieth too many extraneous things on his shoulders. Like the camel +kneeleth he down, and letteth himself be well laden. + +Especially the strong load-bearing man in whom reverence resideth. Too +many EXTRANEOUS heavy words and worths loadeth he upon himself--then +seemeth life to him a desert! + +And verily! Many a thing also that is OUR OWN is hard to bear! And many +internal things in man are like the oyster--repulsive and slippery and +hard to grasp;-- + +So that an elegant shell, with elegant adornment, must plead for +them. But this art also must one learn: to HAVE a shell, and a fine +appearance, and sagacious blindness! + +Again, it deceiveth about many things in man, that many a shell is poor +and pitiable, and too much of a shell. Much concealed goodness and power +is never dreamt of; the choicest dainties find no tasters! + +Women know that, the choicest of them: a little fatter a little leaner-- +oh, how much fate is in so little! + +Man is difficult to discover, and unto himself most difficult of all; +often lieth the spirit concerning the soul. So causeth the spirit of +gravity. + +He, however, hath discovered himself who saith: This is MY good and +evil: therewith hath he silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: "Good +for all, evil for all." + +Verily, neither do I like those who call everything good, and this world +the best of all. Those do I call the all-satisfied. + +All-satisfiedness, which knoweth how to taste everything,--that is +not the best taste! I honour the refractory, fastidious tongues and +stomachs, which have learned to say "I" and "Yea" and "Nay." + +To chew and digest everything, however--that is the genuine +swine-nature! Ever to say YE-A--that hath only the ass learnt, and those +like it!-- + +Deep yellow and hot red--so wanteth MY taste--it mixeth blood with all +colours. He, however, who whitewasheth his house, betrayeth unto me a +whitewashed soul. + +With mummies, some fall in love; others with phantoms: both alike +hostile to all flesh and blood--oh, how repugnant are both to my taste! +For I love blood. + +And there will I not reside and abide where every one spitteth and +speweth: that is now MY taste,--rather would I live amongst thieves and +perjurers. Nobody carrieth gold in his mouth. + +Still more repugnant unto me, however, are all lickspittles; and the +most repugnant animal of man that I found, did I christen "parasite": it +would not love, and would yet live by love. + +Unhappy do I call all those who have only one choice: either to become +evil beasts, or evil beast-tamers. Amongst such would I not build my +tabernacle. + +Unhappy do I also call those who have ever to WAIT,--they are repugnant +to my taste--all the toll-gatherers and traders, and kings, and other +landkeepers and shopkeepers. + +Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so,--but only waiting for +MYSELF. And above all did I learn standing and walking and running and +leaping and climbing and dancing. + +This however is my teaching: he who wisheth one day to fly, must first +learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:--one +doth not fly into flying! + +With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did +I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no +small bliss;-- + +--To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, +but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-wrecked ones! + +By divers ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder +did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness. + +And unwillingly only did I ask my way--that was always counter to my +taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves. + +A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:--and verily, +one must also LEARN to answer such questioning! That, however,--is my +taste: + +--Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no +longer either shame or secrecy. + +"This--is now MY way,--where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who +asked me "the way." For THE way--it doth not exist! + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LVI. OLD AND NEW TABLES. + +1. + +Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new +half-written tables. When cometh mine hour? + +--The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto +men. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what +is good and bad:--unless it be the creating one! + +--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. + +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. + +At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat +admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life. + +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. + +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. + +Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a +wild wisdom, verily!--my great pinion-rustling longing. + +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: + +--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: + +(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!) + +Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods, +and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:-- + +--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:-- + +Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where +necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of +freedom:-- + +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:-- + +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. + +There was it also where I picked up from the path the word "Superman," +and that man is something that must be surpassed. + +--That man is a bridge and not a goal--rejoicing over his noontides and +evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns: + +--The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have +hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows. + +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. + +I taught them all MY poetisation and aspiration: to compose and collect +into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance;-- + +--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. + +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--" + +--This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to call +redemption.-- + +Now do I await MY redemption--that I may go unto them for the last time. + +For once more will I go unto men: AMONGST them will my sun set; in dying +will I give them my choicest gift! + +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,-- + +--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.-- + +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. + +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?-- + +Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: BE NOT CONSIDERATE OF +THY NEIGHBOUR! Man is something that must be surpassed. + +There are many divers ways and modes of surpassing: see THOU thereto! +But only a buffoon thinketh: "man can also be OVERLEAPT." + +Surpass thyself even in thy neighbour: and a right which thou canst +seize upon, shalt thou not allow to be given thee! + +What thou doest can no one do to thee again. Lo, there is no requital. + +He who cannot command himself shall obey. And many a one CAN command +himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedience! + +5. + +Thus wisheth the type of noble souls: they desire to have nothing +GRATUITOUSLY, least of all, life. + +He who is of the populace wisheth to live gratuitously; we others, +however, to whom life hath given itself--we are ever considering WHAT we +can best give IN RETURN! + +And verily, it is a noble dictum which saith: "What life promiseth US, +that promise will WE keep--to life!" + +One should not wish to enjoy where one doth not contribute to the +enjoyment. And one should not WISH to enjoy! + +For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things. Neither like +to be sought for. One should HAVE them,--but one should rather SEEK for +guilt and pain!-- + +6. + +O my brethren, he who is a firstling is ever sacrificed. Now, however, +are we firstlings! + +We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and broil in +honour of ancient idols. + +Our best is still young: this exciteth old palates. Our flesh is tender, +our skin is only lambs' skin:--how could we not excite old idol-priests! + +IN OURSELVES dwelleth he still, the old idol-priest, who broileth our +best for his banquet. Ah, my brethren, how could firstlings fail to be +sacrifices! + +But so wisheth our type; and I love those who do not wish to preserve +themselves, the down-going ones do I love with mine entire love: for +they go beyond.-- + +7. + +To be true--that CAN few be! And he who can, will not! Least of all, +however, can the good be true. + +Oh, those good ones! GOOD MEN NEVER SPEAK THE TRUTH. For the spirit, +thus to be good, is a malady. + +They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves; their heart +repeateth, their soul obeyeth: HE, however, who obeyeth, DOTH NOT LISTEN +TO HIMSELF! + +All that is called evil by the good, must come together in order that +one truth may be born. O my brethren, are ye also evil enough for THIS +truth? + +The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel Nay, the tedium, +the cutting-into-the-quick--how seldom do THESE come together! Out of +such seed, however--is truth produced! + +BESIDE the bad conscience hath hitherto grown all KNOWLEDGE! Break up, +break up, ye discerning ones, the old tables! + +8. + +When the water hath planks, when gangways and railings o'erspan the +stream, verily, he is not believed who then saith: "All is in flux." + +But even the simpletons contradict him. "What?" say the simpletons, "all +in flux? Planks and railings are still OVER the stream! + +"OVER the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the bridges +and bearings, all 'good' and 'evil': these are all STABLE!"-- + +Cometh, however, the hard winter, the stream-tamer, then learn even the +wittiest distrust, and verily, not only the simpletons then say: "Should +not everything--STAND STILL?" + +"Fundamentally standeth everything still"--that is an appropriate winter +doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive period, a great comfort for +winter-sleepers and fireside-loungers. + +"Fundamentally standeth everything still"--: but CONTRARY thereto, +preacheth the thawing wind! + +The thawing wind, a bullock, which is no ploughing bullock--a furious +bullock, a destroyer, which with angry horns breaketh the ice! The ice +however--BREAKETH GANGWAYS! + +O my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX? Have not all +railings and gangways fallen into the water? Who would still HOLD ON to +"good" and "evil"? + +"Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind bloweth!"--Thus preach, my +brethren, through all the streets! + +9. + +There is an old illusion--it is called good and evil. Around soothsayers +and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion. + +Once did one BELIEVE in soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE did +one believe, "Everything is fate: thou shalt, for thou must!" + +Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers; and +THEREFORE did one believe, "Everything is freedom: thou canst, for thou +willest!" + +O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there hath hitherto +been only illusion, and not knowledge; and THEREFORE concerning good and +evil there hath hitherto been only illusion and not knowledge! + +10. + +"Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay!"--such precepts were once +called holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and take off +one's shoes. + +But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in +the world than such holy precepts? + +Is there not even in all life--robbing and slaying? And for such +precepts to be called holy, was not TRUTH itself thereby--slain? + +--Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and +dissuaded from life?--O my brethren, break up, break up for me the old +tables! + +11. + +It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,-- + +--Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every +generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its +bridge! + +A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and +disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for +him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing. + +This however is the other danger, and mine other sympathy:--he who is +of the populace, his thoughts go back to his grandfather,--with his +grandfather, however, doth time cease. + +Thus is all the past abandoned: for it might some day happen for the +populace to become master, and drown all time in shallow waters. + +Therefore, O my brethren, a NEW NOBILITY is needed, which shall be the +adversary of all populace and potentate rule, and shall inscribe anew +the word "noble" on new tables. + +For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, FOR A NEW +NOBILITY! Or, as I once said in parable: "That is just divinity, that +there are Gods, but no God!" + +12. + +O my brethren, I consecrate you and point you to a new nobility: ye +shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future;-- + +--Verily, not to a nobility which ye could purchase like traders with +traders' gold; for little worth is all that hath its price. + +Let it not be your honour henceforth whence ye come, but whither ye go! +Your Will and your feet which seek to surpass you--let these be your new +honour! + +Verily, not that ye have served a prince--of what account are princes +now!--nor that ye have become a bulwark to that which standeth, that it +may stand more firmly. + +Not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that ye have +learned--gay-coloured, like the flamingo--to stand long hours in shallow +pools: + +(For ABILITY-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all courtiers believe +that unto blessedness after death pertaineth--PERMISSION-to-sit!) + +Nor even that a Spirit called Holy, led your forefathers into promised +lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew--the +cross,--in that land there is nothing to praise!-- + +--And verily, wherever this "Holy Spirit" led its knights, always in +such campaigns did--goats and geese, and wryheads and guyheads run +FOREMOST!-- + +O my brethren, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but OUTWARD! +Exiles shall ye be from all fatherlands and forefather-lands! + +Your CHILDREN'S LAND shall ye love: let this love be your new +nobility,--the undiscovered in the remotest seas! For it do I bid your +sails search and search! + +Unto your children shall ye MAKE AMENDS for being the children of your +fathers: all the past shall ye THUS redeem! This new table do I place +over you! + +13. + +"Why should one live? All is vain! To live--that is to thrash straw; to +live--that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm."-- + +Such ancient babbling still passeth for "wisdom"; because it is old, +however, and smelleth mustily, THEREFORE is it the more honoured. Even +mould ennobleth.-- + +Children might thus speak: they SHUN the fire because it hath burnt +them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom. + +And he who ever "thrasheth straw," why should he be allowed to rail at +thrashing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle! + +Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not even +good hunger:--and then do they rail: "All is vain!" + +But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain art! Break up, +break up for me the tables of the never-joyous ones! + +14. + +"To the clean are all things clean"--thus say the people. I, however, +say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish! + +Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also +bowed down): "The world itself is a filthy monster." + +For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have +no peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE--the +backworldsmen! + +TO THOSE do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the +world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside,--SO MUCH is true! + +There is in the world much filth: SO MUCH is true! But the world itself +is not therefore a filthy monster! + +There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smelleth badly: +loathing itself createth wings, and fountain-divining powers! + +In the best there is still something to loathe; and the best is still +something that must be surpassed!-- + +O my brethren, there is much wisdom in the fact that much filth is in +the world!-- + +15. + +Such sayings did I hear pious backworldsmen speak to their consciences, +and verily without wickedness or guile,--although there is nothing more +guileful in the world, or more wicked. + +"Let the world be as it is! Raise not a finger against it!" + +"Let whoever will choke and stab and skin and scrape the people: raise +not a finger against it! Thereby will they learn to renounce the world." + +"And thine own reason--this shalt thou thyself stifle and choke; for it +is a reason of this world,--thereby wilt thou learn thyself to renounce +the world."-- + +--Shatter, shatter, O my brethren, those old tables of the pious! Tatter +the maxims of the world-maligners!-- + +16. + +"He who learneth much unlearneth all violent cravings"--that do people +now whisper to one another in all the dark lanes. + +"Wisdom wearieth, nothing is worth while; thou shalt not crave!"--this +new table found I hanging even in the public markets. + +Break up for me, O my brethren, break up also that NEW table! The +weary-o'-the-world put it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer: +for lo, it is also a sermon for slavery:-- + +Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything too early +and everything too fast; because they ATE badly: from thence hath +resulted their ruined stomach;-- + +--For a ruined stomach, is their spirit: IT persuadeth to death! For +verily, my brethren, the spirit IS a stomach! + +Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined stomach +speaketh, the father of affliction, all fountains are poisoned. + +To discern: that is DELIGHT to the lion-willed! But he who hath become +weary, is himself merely "willed"; with him play all the waves. + +And such is always the nature of weak men: they lose themselves on their +way. And at last asketh their weariness: "Why did we ever go on the way? +All is indifferent!" + +TO THEM soundeth it pleasant to have preached in their ears: "Nothing is +worth while! Ye shall not will!" That, however, is a sermon for slavery. + +O my brethren, a fresh blustering wind cometh Zarathustra unto all +way-weary ones; many noses will he yet make sneeze! + +Even through walls bloweth my free breath, and in into prisons and +imprisoned spirits! + +Willing emancipateth: for willing is creating: so do I teach. And ONLY +for creating shall ye learn! + +And also the learning shall ye LEARN only from me, the learning +well!--He who hath ears let him hear! + +17. + +There standeth the boat--thither goeth it over, perhaps into vast +nothingness--but who willeth to enter into this "Perhaps"? + +None of you want to enter into the death-boat! How should ye then be +WORLD-WEARY ones! + +World-weary ones! And have not even withdrawn from the earth! Eager +did I ever find you for the earth, amorous still of your own +earth-weariness! + +Not in vain doth your lip hang down:--a small worldly wish still sitteth +thereon! And in your eye--floateth there not a cloudlet of unforgotten +earthly bliss? + +There are on the earth many good inventions, some useful, some pleasant: +for their sake is the earth to be loved. + +And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman's +breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant. + +Ye world-weary ones, however! Ye earth-idlers! You, shall one beat with +stripes! With stripes shall one again make you sprightly limbs. + +For if ye be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the earth is +weary, then are ye sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats. And if +ye will not again RUN gaily, then shall ye--pass away! + +To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician: thus teacheth +Zarathustra:--so shall ye pass away! + +But more COURAGE is needed to make an end than to make a new verse: that +do all physicians and poets know well.-- + +18. + +O my brethren, there are tables which weariness framed, and tables +which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness: although they speak +similarly, they want to be heard differently.-- + +See this languishing one! Only a span-breadth is he from his goal; but +from weariness hath he lain down obstinately in the dust, this brave +one! + +From weariness yawneth he at the path, at the earth, at the goal, and at +himself: not a step further will he go,--this brave one! + +Now gloweth the sun upon him, and the dogs lick at his sweat: but he +lieth there in his obstinacy and preferreth to languish:-- + +--A span-breadth from his goal, to languish! Verily, ye will have to +drag him into his heaven by the hair of his head--this hero! + +Better still that ye let him lie where he hath lain down, that sleep may +come unto him, the comforter, with cooling patter-rain. + +Let him lie, until of his own accord he awakeneth,--until of his own +accord he repudiateth all weariness, and what weariness hath taught +through him! + +Only, my brethren, see that ye scare the dogs away from him, the idle +skulkers, and all the swarming vermin:-- + +--All the swarming vermin of the "cultured," that--feast on the sweat of +every hero!-- + +19. + +I form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer ascend with +me ever higher mountains: I build a mountain-range out of ever holier +mountains.-- + +But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take care lest a +PARASITE ascend with you! + +A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile, that trieth +to fatten on your infirm and sore places. + +And THIS is its art: it divineth where ascending souls are weary, in +your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, doth it build its +loathsome nest. + +Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all-too-gentle--there +buildeth it its loathsome nest; the parasite liveth where the great have +small sore-places. + +What is the highest of all species of being, and what is the lowest? +The parasite is the lowest species; he, however, who is of the highest +species feedeth most parasites. + +For the soul which hath the longest ladder, and can go deepest down: how +could there fail to be most parasites upon it?-- + +--The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and rove furthest +in itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy flingeth itself +into chance:-- + +--The soul in Being, which plungeth into Becoming; the possessing soul, +which SEEKETH to attain desire and longing:-- + +--The soul fleeing from itself, which overtaketh itself in the widest +circuit; the wisest soul, unto which folly speaketh most sweetly:-- + +--The soul most self-loving, in which all things have their current and +counter-current, their ebb and their flow:--oh, how could THE LOFTIEST +SOUL fail to have the worst parasites? + +20. + +O my brethren, am I then cruel? But I say: What falleth, that shall one +also push! + +Everything of to-day--it falleth, it decayeth; who would preserve it! +But I--I wish also to push it! + +Know ye the delight which rolleth stones into precipitous depths?--Those +men of to-day, see just how they roll into my depths! + +A prelude am I to better players, O my brethren! An example! DO +according to mine example! + +And him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach I pray you--TO FALL FASTER!-- + +21. + +I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman,--one must also +know WHEREON to use swordsmanship! + +And often is it greater bravery to keep quiet and pass by, that THEREBY +one may reserve oneself for a worthier foe! + +Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: ye +must be proud of your foes. Thus have I already taught. + +For the worthier foe, O my brethren, shall ye reserve yourselves: +therefore must ye pass by many a one,-- + +--Especially many of the rabble, who din your ears with noise about +people and peoples. + +Keep your eye clear of their For and Against! There is there much right, +much wrong: he who looketh on becometh wroth. + +Therein viewing, therein hewing--they are the same thing: therefore +depart into the forests and lay your sword to sleep! + +Go YOUR ways! and let the people and peoples go theirs!--gloomy ways, +verily, on which not a single hope glinteth any more! + +Let there the trader rule, where all that still glittereth is--traders' +gold. It is the time of kings no longer: that which now calleth itself +the people is unworthy of kings. + +See how these peoples themselves now do just like the traders: they pick +up the smallest advantage out of all kinds of rubbish! + +They lay lures for one another, they lure things out of one +another,--that they call "good neighbourliness." O blessed remote period +when a people said to itself: "I will be--MASTER over peoples!" + +For, my brethren, the best shall rule, the best also WILLETH to rule! +And where the teaching is different, there--the best is LACKING. + +22. + +If THEY had--bread for nothing, alas! for what would THEY cry! Their +maintainment--that is their true entertainment; and they shall have it +hard! + +Beasts of prey, are they: in their "working"--there is even plundering, +in their "earning"--there is even overreaching! Therefore shall they +have it hard! + +Better beasts of prey shall they thus become, subtler, cleverer, MORE +MAN-LIKE: for man is the best beast of prey. + +All the animals hath man already robbed of their virtues: that is why of +all animals it hath been hardest for man. + +Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should yet learn to fly, +alas! TO WHAT HEIGHT--would his rapacity fly! + +23. + +Thus would I have man and woman: fit for war, the one; fit for +maternity, the other; both, however, fit for dancing with head and legs. + +And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced. And +false be every truth which hath not had laughter along with it! + +24. + +Your marriage-arranging: see that it be not a bad ARRANGING! Ye have +arranged too hastily: so there FOLLOWETH therefrom--marriage-breaking! + +And better marriage-breaking than marriage-bending, +marriage-lying!--Thus spake a woman unto me: "Indeed, I broke the +marriage, but first did the marriage break--me! + +The badly paired found I ever the most revengeful: they make every one +suffer for it that they no longer run singly. + +On that account want I the honest ones to say to one another: "We love +each other: let us SEE TO IT that we maintain our love! Or shall our +pledging be blundering?" + +--"Give us a set term and a small marriage, that we may see if we are +fit for the great marriage! It is a great matter always to be twain." + +Thus do I counsel all honest ones; and what would be my love to the +Superman, and to all that is to come, if I should counsel and speak +otherwise! + +Not only to propagate yourselves onwards but UPWARDS--thereto, O my +brethren, may the garden of marriage help you! + +25. + +He who hath grown wise concerning old origins, lo, he will at last seek +after the fountains of the future and new origins.-- + +O my brethren, not long will it be until NEW PEOPLES shall arise and new +fountains shall rush down into new depths. + +For the earthquake--it choketh up many wells, it causeth much +languishing: but it bringeth also to light inner powers and secrets. + +The earthquake discloseth new fountains. In the earthquake of old +peoples new fountains burst forth. + +And whoever calleth out: "Lo, here is a well for many thirsty ones, one +heart for many longing ones, one will for many instruments":--around him +collecteth a PEOPLE, that is to say, many attempting ones. + +Who can command, who must obey--THAT IS THERE ATTEMPTED! Ah, with what +long seeking and solving and failing and learning and re-attempting! + +Human society: it is an attempt--so I teach--a long seeking: it seeketh +however the ruler!-- + +--An attempt, my brethren! And NO "contract"! Destroy, I pray you, +destroy that word of the soft-hearted and half-and-half! + +26. + +O my brethren! With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human +future? Is it not with the good and just?-- + +--As those who say and feel in their hearts: "We already know what +is good and just, we possess it also; woe to those who still seek +thereafter! + +And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm of the good is the +harmfulest harm! + +And whatever harm the world-maligners may do, the harm of the good is +the harmfulest harm! + +O my brethren, into the hearts of the good and just looked some one +once on a time, who said: "They are the Pharisees." But people did not +understand him. + +The good and just themselves were not free to understand him; their +spirit was imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the +good is unfathomably wise. + +It is the truth, however, that the good MUST be Pharisees--they have no +choice! + +The good MUST crucify him who deviseth his own virtue! That IS the +truth! + +The second one, however, who discovered their country--the country, +heart and soil of the good and just,--it was he who asked: "Whom do they +hate most?" + +The CREATOR, hate they most, him who breaketh the tables and old values, +the breaker,--him they call the law-breaker. + +For the good--they CANNOT create; they are always the beginning of the +end:-- + +--They crucify him who writeth new values on new tables, they sacrifice +UNTO THEMSELVES the future--they crucify the whole human future! + +The good--they have always been the beginning of the end.-- + +27. + +O my brethren, have ye also understood this word? And what I once said +of the "last man"?-- + +With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not +with the good and just? + +BREAK UP, BREAK UP, I PRAY YOU, THE GOOD AND JUST!--O my brethren, have +ye understood also this word? + +28. + +Ye flee from me? Ye are frightened? Ye tremble at this word? + +O my brethren, when I enjoined you to break up the good, and the tables +of the good, then only did I embark man on his high seas. + +And now only cometh unto him the great terror, the great outlook, the +great sickness, the great nausea, the great sea-sickness. + +False shores and false securities did the good teach you; in the lies of +the good were ye born and bred. Everything hath been radically contorted +and distorted by the good. + +But he who discovered the country of "man," discovered also the country +of "man's future." Now shall ye be sailors for me, brave, patient! + +Keep yourselves up betimes, my brethren, learn to keep yourselves up! +The sea stormeth: many seek to raise themselves again by you. + +The sea stormeth: all is in the sea. Well! Cheer up! Ye old +seaman-hearts! + +What of fatherland! THITHER striveth our helm where our CHILDREN'S LAND +is! Thitherwards, stormier than the sea, stormeth our great longing!-- + +29. + +"Why so hard!"--said to the diamond one day the charcoal; "are we then +not near relatives?"-- + +Why so soft? O my brethren; thus do _I_ ask you: are ye then not--my +brethren? + +Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much negation +and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your +looks? + +And if ye will not be fates and inexorable ones, how can ye one day-- +conquer with me? + +And if your hardness will not glance and cut and chip to pieces, how can +ye one day--create with me? + +For the creators are hard. And blessedness must it seem to you to press +your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,-- + +--Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon +brass,--harder than brass, nobler than brass. Entirely hard is only the +noblest. + +This new table, O my brethren, put I up over you: BECOME HARD!-- + +30. + +O thou, my Will! Thou change of every need, MY needfulness! Preserve me +from all small victories! + +Thou fatedness of my soul, which I call fate! Thou In-me! Over-me! +Preserve and spare me for one great fate! + +And thy last greatness, my Will, spare it for thy last--that thou mayest +be inexorable IN thy victory! Ah, who hath not succumbed to his victory! + +Ah, whose eye hath not bedimmed in this intoxicated twilight! Ah, whose +foot hath not faltered and forgotten in victory--how to stand!-- + +--That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noontide: ready and +ripe like the glowing ore, the lightning-bearing cloud, and the swelling +milk-udder:-- + +--Ready for myself and for my most hidden Will: a bow eager for its +arrow, an arrow eager for its star:-- + +--A star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, pierced, blessed, by +annihilating sun-arrows:-- + +--A sun itself, and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in +victory! + +O Will, thou change of every need, MY needfulness! Spare me for one +great victory!--- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LVII. THE CONVALESCENT. + +1. + +One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang +up from his couch like a madman, crying with a frightful voice, and +acting as if some one still lay on the couch who did not wish to rise. +Zarathustra's voice also resounded in such a manner that his animals +came to him frightened, and out of all the neighbouring caves and +lurking-places all the creatures slipped away--flying, fluttering, +creeping or leaping, according to their variety of foot or wing. +Zarathustra, however, spake these words: + +Up, abysmal thought out of my depth! I am thy cock and morning dawn, +thou overslept reptile: Up! Up! My voice shall soon crow thee awake! + +Unbind the fetters of thine ears: listen! For I wish to hear thee! Up! +Up! There is thunder enough to make the very graves listen! + +And rub the sleep and all the dimness and blindness out of thine eyes! +Hear me also with thine eyes: my voice is a medicine even for those born +blind. + +And once thou art awake, then shalt thou ever remain awake. It is not +MY custom to awake great-grandmothers out of their sleep that I may bid +them--sleep on! + +Thou stirrest, stretchest thyself, wheezest? Up! Up! Not wheeze, shalt +thou,--but speak unto me! Zarathustra calleth thee, Zarathustra the +godless! + +I, Zarathustra, the advocate of living, the advocate of suffering, the +advocate of the circuit--thee do I call, my most abysmal thought! + +Joy to me! Thou comest,--I hear thee! Mine abyss SPEAKETH, my lowest +depth have I turned over into the light! + +Joy to me! Come hither! Give me thy hand--ha! let be! aha!--Disgust, +disgust, disgust--alas to me! + +2. + +Hardly, however, had Zarathustra spoken these words, when he fell down +as one dead, and remained long as one dead. When however he again came +to himself, then was he pale and trembling, and remained lying; and for +long he would neither eat nor drink. This condition continued for seven +days; his animals, however, did not leave him day nor night, except that +the eagle flew forth to fetch food. And what it fetched and foraged, +it laid on Zarathustra's couch: so that Zarathustra at last lay among +yellow and red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbage, and +pine-cones. At his feet, however, two lambs were stretched, which the +eagle had with difficulty carried off from their shepherds. + +At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself upon his couch, +took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it and found its smell pleasant. +Then did his animals think the time had come to speak unto him. + +"O Zarathustra," said they, "now hast thou lain thus for seven days with +heavy eyes: wilt thou not set thyself again upon thy feet? + +Step out of thy cave: the world waiteth for thee as a garden. The wind +playeth with heavy fragrance which seeketh for thee; and all brooks +would like to run after thee. + +All things long for thee, since thou hast remained alone for seven +days--step forth out of thy cave! All things want to be thy physicians! + +Did perhaps a new knowledge come to thee, a bitter, grievous knowledge? +Like leavened dough layest thou, thy soul arose and swelled beyond all +its bounds.--" + +--O mine animals, answered Zarathustra, talk on thus and let me listen! +It refresheth me so to hear your talk: where there is talk, there is the +world as a garden unto me. + +How charming it is that there are words and tones; are not words and +tones rainbows and seeming bridges 'twixt the eternally separated? + +To each soul belongeth another world; to each soul is every other soul a +back-world. + +Among the most alike doth semblance deceive most delightfully: for the +smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over. + +For me--how could there be an outside-of-me? There is no outside! But +this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget! + +Have not names and tones been given unto things that man may refresh +himself with them? It is a beautiful folly, speaking; therewith danceth +man over everything. + +How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones! With tones danceth +our love on variegated rainbows.-- + +--"O Zarathustra," said then his animals, "to those who think like us, +things all dance themselves: they come and hold out the hand and laugh +and flee--and return. + +Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel +of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again; +eternally runneth on the year of existence. + +Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eternally buildeth +itself the same house of existence. All things separate, all things +again greet one another; eternally true to itself remaineth the ring of +existence. + +Every moment beginneth existence, around every 'Here' rolleth the ball +'There.' The middle is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity."-- + +--O ye wags and barrel-organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled once +more, how well do ye know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:-- + +--And how that monster crept into my throat and choked me! But I bit off +its head and spat it away from me. + +And ye--ye have made a lyre-lay out of it? Now, however, do I lie here, +still exhausted with that biting and spitting-away, still sick with mine +own salvation. + +AND YE LOOKED ON AT IT ALL? O mine animals, are ye also cruel? Did +ye like to look at my great pain as men do? For man is the cruellest +animal. + +At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions hath he hitherto been +happiest on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold, that was his +heaven on earth. + +When the great man crieth--: immediately runneth the little man thither, +and his tongue hangeth out of his mouth for very lusting. He, however, +calleth it his "pity." + +The little man, especially the poet--how passionately doth he accuse +life in words! Hearken to him, but do not fail to hear the delight which +is in all accusation! + +Such accusers of life--them life overcometh with a glance of the eye. +"Thou lovest me?" saith the insolent one; "wait a little, as yet have I +no time for thee." + +Towards himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who call +themselves "sinners" and "bearers of the cross" and "penitents," do not +overlook the voluptuousness in their plaints and accusations! + +And I myself--do I thereby want to be man's accuser? Ah, mine animals, +this only have I learned hitherto, that for man his baddest is necessary +for his best,-- + +--That all that is baddest is the best POWER, and the hardest stone for +the highest creator; and that man must become better AND badder:-- + +Not to THIS torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad,--but I +cried, as no one hath yet cried: + +"Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very +small!" + +The great disgust at man--IT strangled me and had crept into my throat: +and what the soothsayer had presaged: "All is alike, nothing is worth +while, knowledge strangleth." + +A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally +intoxicated sadness, which spake with yawning mouth. + +"Eternally he returneth, the man of whom thou art weary, the small +man"--so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not go to +sleep. + +A cavern, became the human earth to me; its breast caved in; everything +living became to me human dust and bones and mouldering past. + +My sighing sat on all human graves, and could no longer arise: my +sighing and questioning croaked and choked, and gnawed and nagged day +and night: + +--"Ah, man returneth eternally! The small man returneth eternally!" + +Naked had I once seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest +man: all too like one another--all too human, even the greatest man! + +All too small, even the greatest man!--that was my disgust at man! And +the eternal return also of the smallest man!--that was my disgust at all +existence! + +Ah, Disgust! Disgust! Disgust!--Thus spake Zarathustra, and sighed and +shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. Then did his animals prevent +him from speaking further. + +"Do not speak further, thou convalescent!"--so answered his animals, +"but go out where the world waiteth for thee like a garden. + +Go out unto the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves! Especially, +however, unto the singing-birds, to learn SINGING from them! + +For singing is for the convalescent; the sound ones may talk. And +when the sound also want songs, then want they other songs than the +convalescent." + +--"O ye wags and barrel-organs, do be silent!" answered Zarathustra, and +smiled at his animals. "How well ye know what consolation I devised for +myself in seven days! + +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. + +O my soul, I have taught thee to say "to-day" as "once on a time" and +"formerly," and to dance thy measure over every Here and There and +Yonder. + +O my soul, I delivered thee from all by-places, I brushed down from thee +dust and spiders and twilight. + +O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the by-place virtue from thee, +and persuaded thee to stand naked before the eyes of the sun. + +With the storm that is called "spirit" did I blow over thy surging +sea; all clouds did I blow away from it; I strangled even the strangler +called "sin." + +O my soul, I gave thee the right to say Nay like the storm, and to say +Yea as the open heaven saith Yea: calm as the light remainest thou, and +now walkest through denying storms. + +O my soul, I restored to thee liberty over the created and the +uncreated; and who knoweth, as thou knowest, the voluptuousness of the +future? + +O my soul, I taught thee the contempt which doth not come like +worm-eating, the great, the loving contempt, which loveth most where it +contemneth most. + +O my soul, I taught thee so to persuade that thou persuadest even the +grounds themselves to thee: like the sun, which persuadeth even the sea +to its height. + +O my soul, I have taken from thee all obeying and knee-bending and +homage-paying; I have myself given thee the names, "Change of need" and +"Fate." + +O my soul, I have given thee new names and gay-coloured playthings, +I have called thee "Fate" and "the Circuit of circuits" and "the +Navel-string of time" and "the Azure bell." + +O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and +also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom. + +O my soul, every sun shed I upon thee, and every night and every silence +and every longing:--then grewest thou up for me as a vine. + +O my soul, exuberant and heavy dost thou now stand forth, a vine with +swelling udders and full clusters of brown golden grapes:-- + +--Filled and weighted by thy happiness, waiting from superabundance, and +yet ashamed of thy waiting. + +O my soul, there is nowhere a soul which could be more loving and more +comprehensive and more extensive! Where could future and past be closer +together than with thee? + +O my soul, I have given thee everything, and all my hands have become +empty by thee:--and now! Now sayest thou to me, smiling and full of +melancholy: "Which of us oweth thanks?-- + +--Doth the giver not owe thanks because the receiver received? Is +bestowing not a necessity? Is receiving not--pitying?"-- + +O my soul, I understand the smiling of thy melancholy: thine +over-abundance itself now stretcheth out longing hands! + +Thy fulness looketh forth over raging seas, and seeketh and waiteth: the +longing of over-fulness looketh forth from the smiling heaven of thine +eyes! + +And verily, O my soul! Who could see thy smiling and not melt +into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the +over-graciousness of thy smiling. + +Thy graciousness and over-graciousness, is it which will not complain +and weep: and yet, O my soul, longeth thy smiling for tears, and thy +trembling mouth for sobs. + +"Is not all weeping complaining? And all complaining, accusing?" Thus +speakest thou to thyself; and therefore, O my soul, wilt thou rather +smile than pour forth thy grief-- + +--Than in gushing tears pour forth all thy grief concerning thy +fulness, and concerning the craving of the vine for the vintager and +vintage-knife! + +But wilt thou not weep, wilt thou not weep forth thy purple melancholy, +then wilt thou have to SING, O my soul!--Behold, I smile myself, who +foretell thee this: + +--Thou wilt have to sing with passionate song, until all seas turn calm +to hearken unto thy longing,-- + +--Until over calm longing seas the bark glideth, the golden marvel, +around the gold of which all good, bad, and marvellous things frisk:-- + +--Also many large and small animals, and everything that hath light +marvellous feet, so that it can run on violet-blue paths,-- + +--Towards the golden marvel, the spontaneous bark, and its master: he, +however, is the vintager who waiteth with the diamond vintage-knife,-- + +--Thy great deliverer, O my soul, the nameless one--for whom future +songs only will find names! And verily, already hath thy breath the +fragrance of future songs,-- + +--Already glowest thou and dreamest, already drinkest thou thirstily at +all deep echoing wells of consolation, already reposeth thy melancholy +in the bliss of future songs!-- + +O my soul, now have I given thee all, and even my last possession, and +all my hands have become empty by thee:--THAT I BADE THEE SING, behold, +that was my last thing to give! + +That I bade thee sing,--say now, say: WHICH of us now--oweth thanks?-- +Better still, however: sing unto me, sing, O my soul! And let me thank +thee!-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LIX. THE SECOND DANCE-SONG. + +1. + +"Into thine eyes gazed I lately, O Life: gold saw I gleam in thy +night-eyes,--my heart stood still with delight: + +--A golden bark saw I gleam on darkened waters, a sinking, drinking, +reblinking, golden swing-bark! + +At my dance-frantic foot, dost thou cast a glance, a laughing, +questioning, melting, thrown glance: + +Twice only movedst thou thy rattle with thy little hands--then did my +feet swing with dance-fury.-- + +My heels reared aloft, my toes they hearkened,--thee they would know: +hath not the dancer his ear--in his toe! + +Unto thee did I spring: then fledst thou back from my bound; and towards +me waved thy fleeing, flying tresses round! + +Away from thee did I spring, and from thy snaky tresses: then stoodst +thou there half-turned, and in thine eye caresses. + +With crooked glances--dost thou teach me crooked courses; on crooked +courses learn my feet--crafty fancies! + +I fear thee near, I love thee far; thy flight allureth me, thy seeking +secureth me:--I suffer, but for thee, what would I not gladly bear! + +For thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred misleadeth, whose +flight enchaineth, whose mockery--pleadeth: + +--Who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, inwindress, temptress, +seekress, findress! Who would not love thee, thou innocent, impatient, +wind-swift, child-eyed sinner! + +Whither pullest thou me now, thou paragon and tomboy? And now foolest +thou me fleeing; thou sweet romp dost annoy! + +I dance after thee, I follow even faint traces lonely. Where art thou? +Give me thy hand! Or thy finger only! + +Here are caves and thickets: we shall go astray!--Halt! Stand still! +Seest thou not owls and bats in fluttering fray? + +Thou bat! Thou owl! Thou wouldst play me foul? Where are we? From the +dogs hast thou learned thus to bark and howl. + +Thou gnashest on me sweetly with little white teeth; thine evil eyes +shoot out upon me, thy curly little mane from underneath! + +This is a dance over stock and stone: I am the hunter,--wilt thou be my +hound, or my chamois anon? + +Now beside me! And quickly, wickedly springing! Now up! And over!--Alas! +I have fallen myself overswinging! + +Oh, see me lying, thou arrogant one, and imploring grace! Gladly would I +walk with thee--in some lovelier place! + +--In the paths of love, through bushes variegated, quiet, trim! Or there +along the lake, where gold-fishes dance and swim! + +Thou art now a-weary? There above are sheep and sun-set stripes: is it +not sweet to sleep--the shepherd pipes? + +Thou art so very weary? I carry thee thither; let just thine arm sink! +And art thou thirsty--I should have something; but thy mouth would not +like it to drink!-- + +--Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where art +thou gone? But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two spots and red +blotches itch! + +I am verily weary of it, ever thy sheepish shepherd to be. Thou witch, +if I have hitherto sung unto thee, now shalt THOU--cry unto me! + +To the rhythm of my whip shalt thou dance and cry! I forget not my +whip?--Not I!"-- + +2. + +Then did Life answer me thus, and kept thereby her fine ears closed: + +"O Zarathustra! Crack not so terribly with thy whip! Thou knowest surely +that noise killeth thought,--and just now there came to me such delicate +thoughts. + +We are both of us genuine ne'er-do-wells and ne'er-do-ills. Beyond +good and evil found we our island and our green meadow--we two alone! +Therefore must we be friendly to each other! + +And even should we not love each other from the bottom of our +hearts,--must we then have a grudge against each other if we do not love +each other perfectly? + +And that I am friendly to thee, and often too friendly, that knowest +thou: and the reason is that I am envious of thy Wisdom. Ah, this mad +old fool, Wisdom! + +If thy Wisdom should one day run away from thee, ah! then would also my +love run away from thee quickly."-- + +Thereupon did Life look thoughtfully behind and around, and said softly: +"O Zarathustra, thou art not faithful enough to me! + +Thou lovest me not nearly so much as thou sayest; I know thou thinkest +of soon leaving me. + +There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it boometh by night up to +thy cave:-- + +--When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then +thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon-- + +--Thou thinkest thereon, O Zarathustra, I know it--of soon leaving +me!"-- + +"Yea," answered I, hesitatingly, "but thou knowest it also"--And I +said something into her ear, in amongst her confused, yellow, foolish +tresses. + +"Thou KNOWEST that, O Zarathustra? That knoweth no one--" + +And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow o'er which +the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together.--Then, however, +was Life dearer unto me than all my Wisdom had ever been.-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + +3. + +One! + +O man! Take heed! + +Two! + +What saith deep midnight's voice indeed? + +Three! + +"I slept my sleep-- + +Four! + +"From deepest dream I've woke and plead:-- + +Five! + +"The world is deep, + +Six! + +"And deeper than the day could read. + +Seven! + +"Deep is its woe-- + +Eight! + +"Joy--deeper still than grief can be: + +Nine! + +"Woe saith: Hence! Go! + +Ten! + +"But joys all want eternity-- + +Eleven! + +"Want deep profound eternity!" + +Twelve! + + + + +LX. THE SEVEN SEALS. + +(OR THE YEA AND AMEN LAY.) + +1. + +If I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wandereth on +high mountain-ridges, 'twixt two seas,-- + +Wandereth 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud--hostile to +sultry plains, and to all that is weary and can neither die nor live: + +Ready for lightning in its dark bosom, and for the redeeming flash of +light, charged with lightnings which say Yea! which laugh Yea! ready for +divining flashes of lightning:-- + +--Blessed, however, is he who is thus charged! And verily, long must he +hang like a heavy tempest on the mountain, who shall one day kindle the +light of the future!-- + +Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring of +rings--the ring of the return? + +Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, +unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! + +FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! + +2. + +If ever my wrath hath burst graves, shifted landmarks, or rolled old +shattered tables into precipitous depths: + +If ever my scorn hath scattered mouldered words to the winds, and if I +have come like a besom to cross-spiders, and as a cleansing wind to old +charnel-houses: + +If ever I have sat rejoicing where old Gods lie buried, world-blessing, +world-loving, beside the monuments of old world-maligners:-- + +--For even churches and Gods'-graves do I love, if only heaven looketh +through their ruined roofs with pure eyes; gladly do I sit like grass +and red poppies on ruined churches-- + +Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of +rings--the ring of the return? + +Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, +unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! + +FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! + +3. + +If ever a breath hath come to me of the creative breath, and of the +heavenly necessity which compelleth even chances to dance star-dances: + +If ever I have laughed with the laughter of the creative lightning, +to which the long thunder of the deed followeth, grumblingly, but +obediently: + +If ever I have played dice with the Gods at the divine table of +the earth, so that the earth quaked and ruptured, and snorted forth +fire-streams:-- + +--For a divine table is the earth, and trembling with new creative +dictums and dice-casts of the Gods: + +Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of +rings--the ring of the return? + +Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, +unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! + +FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! + +4. + +If ever I have drunk a full draught of the foaming spice- and +confection-bowl in which all things are well mixed: + +If ever my hand hath mingled the furthest with the nearest, fire with +spirit, joy with sorrow, and the harshest with the kindest: + +If I myself am a grain of the saving salt which maketh everything in the +confection-bowl mix well:-- + +--For there is a salt which uniteth good with evil; and even the evilest +is worthy, as spicing and as final over-foaming:-- + +Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of +rings--the ring of the return? + +Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, +unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! + +FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! + +5. + +If I be fond of the sea, and all that is sealike, and fondest of it when +it angrily contradicteth me: + +If the exploring delight be in me, which impelleth sails to the +undiscovered, if the seafarer's delight be in my delight: + +If ever my rejoicing hath called out: "The shore hath vanished,--now +hath fallen from me the last chain-- + +The boundless roareth around me, far away sparkle for me space and +time,--well! cheer up! old heart!"-- + +Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of +rings--the ring of the return? + +Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, +unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! + +FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! + +6. + +If my virtue be a dancer's virtue, and if I have often sprung with both +feet into golden-emerald rapture: + +If my wickedness be a laughing wickedness, at home among rose-banks and +hedges of lilies: + +--For in laughter is all evil present, but it is sanctified and absolved +by its own bliss:-- + +And if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become +light, every body a dancer, and every spirit a bird: and verily, that is +my Alpha and Omega!-- + +Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of +rings--the ring of the return? + +Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, +unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! + +FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! + +7. + +If ever I have spread out a tranquil heaven above me, and have flown +into mine own heaven with mine own pinions: + +If I have swum playfully in profound luminous distances, and if my +freedom's avian wisdom hath come to me:-- + +--Thus however speaketh avian wisdom:--"Lo, there is no above and no +below! Throw thyself about,--outward, backward, thou light one! Sing! +speak no more! + +--Are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the +light ones? Sing! speak no more!"-- + +Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of +rings--the ring of the return? + +Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, +unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! + +FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! + + + + +FOURTH AND LAST PART. + +Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the +pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the +follies of the pitiful? + +Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their +pity! + +Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: "Even God hath his hell: +it is his love for man." + +And lately did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: of his pity for +man hath God died."--ZARATHUSTRA, II., "The Pitiful." + + + + +LXI. THE HONEY SACRIFICE. + +--And again passed moons and years over Zarathustra's soul, and he +heeded it not; his hair, however, became white. One day when he sat on +a stone in front of his cave, and gazed calmly into the distance--one +there gazeth out on the sea, and away beyond sinuous abysses,--then went +his animals thoughtfully round about him, and at last set themselves in +front of him. + +"O Zarathustra," said they, "gazest thou out perhaps for thy +happiness?"--"Of what account is my happiness!" answered he, "I have +long ceased to strive any more for happiness, I strive for my work."--"O +Zarathustra," said the animals once more, "that sayest thou as one +who hath overmuch of good things. Liest thou not in a sky-blue lake of +happiness?"--"Ye wags," answered Zarathustra, and smiled, "how well did +ye choose the simile! But ye know also that my happiness is heavy, and +not like a fluid wave of water: it presseth me and will not leave me, +and is like molten pitch."-- + +Then went his animals again thoughtfully around him, and placed +themselves once more in front of him. "O Zarathustra," said they, "it is +consequently FOR THAT REASON that thou thyself always becometh yellower +and darker, although thy hair looketh white and flaxen? Lo, thou sittest +in thy pitch!"--"What do ye say, mine animals?" said Zarathustra, +laughing; "verily I reviled when I spake of pitch. As it happeneth with +me, so is it with all fruits that turn ripe. It is the HONEY in my veins +that maketh my blood thicker, and also my soul stiller."--"So will it +be, O Zarathustra," answered his animals, and pressed up to him; "but +wilt thou not to-day ascend a high mountain? The air is pure, and to-day +one seeth more of the world than ever."--"Yea, mine animals," answered +he, "ye counsel admirably and according to my heart: I will to-day +ascend a high mountain! But see that honey is there ready to hand, +yellow, white, good, ice-cool, golden-comb-honey. For know that when +aloft I will make the honey-sacrifice."-- + +When Zarathustra, however, was aloft on the summit, he sent his animals +home that had accompanied him, and found that he was now alone:--then he +laughed from the bottom of his heart, looked around him, and spake thus: + +That I spake of sacrifices and honey-sacrifices, it was merely a ruse +in talking and verily, a useful folly! Here aloft can I now speak freer +than in front of mountain-caves and anchorites' domestic animals. + +What to sacrifice! I squander what is given me, a squanderer with a +thousand hands: how could I call that--sacrificing? + +And when I desired honey I only desired bait, and sweet mucus and +mucilage, for which even the mouths of growling bears, and strange, +sulky, evil birds, water: + +--The best bait, as huntsmen and fishermen require it. For if the world +be as a gloomy forest of animals, and a pleasure-ground for all wild +huntsmen, it seemeth to me rather--and preferably--a fathomless, rich +sea; + +--A sea full of many-hued fishes and crabs, for which even the Gods +might long, and might be tempted to become fishers in it, and casters of +nets,--so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small! + +Especially the human world, the human sea:--towards IT do I now throw +out my golden angle-rod and say: Open up, thou human abyss! + +Open up, and throw unto me thy fish and shining crabs! With my best bait +shall I allure to myself to-day the strangest human fish! + +--My happiness itself do I throw out into all places far and wide 'twixt +orient, noontide, and occident, to see if many human fish will not learn +to hug and tug at my happiness;-- + +Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up unto MY +height, the motleyest abyss-groundlings, to the wickedest of all fishers +of men. + +For THIS am I from the heart and from the beginning--drawing, +hither-drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a drawer, a trainer, a +training-master, who not in vain counselled himself once on a time: +"Become what thou art!" + +Thus may men now come UP to me; for as yet do I await the signs that it +is time for my down-going; as yet do I not myself go down, as I must do, +amongst men. + +Therefore do I here wait, crafty and scornful upon high mountains, +no impatient one, no patient one; rather one who hath even unlearnt +patience,--because he no longer "suffereth." + +For my fate giveth me time: it hath forgotten me perhaps? Or doth it sit +behind a big stone and catch flies? + +And verily, I am well-disposed to mine eternal fate, because it doth not +hound and hurry me, but leaveth me time for merriment and mischief; so +that I have to-day ascended this high mountain to catch fish. + +Did ever any one catch fish upon high mountains? And though it be a +folly what I here seek and do, it is better so than that down below I +should become solemn with waiting, and green and yellow-- + +--A posturing wrath-snorter with waiting, a holy howl-storm from +the mountains, an impatient one that shouteth down into the valleys: +"Hearken, else I will scourge you with the scourge of God!" + +Not that I would have a grudge against such wrathful ones on that +account: they are well enough for laughter to me! Impatient must they +now be, those big alarm-drums, which find a voice now or never! + +Myself, however, and my fate--we do not talk to the Present, neither +do we talk to the Never: for talking we have patience and time and more +than time. For one day must it yet come, and may not pass by. + +What must one day come and may not pass by? Our great Hazar, that is +to say, our great, remote human-kingdom, the Zarathustra-kingdom of a +thousand years-- + +How remote may such "remoteness" be? What doth it concern me? But on +that account it is none the less sure unto me--, with both feet stand I +secure on this ground; + +--On an eternal ground, on hard primary rock, on this highest, hardest, +primary mountain-ridge, unto which all winds come, as unto the +storm-parting, asking Where? and Whence? and Whither? + +Here laugh, laugh, my hearty, healthy wickedness! From high mountains +cast down thy glittering scorn-laughter! Allure for me with thy +glittering the finest human fish! + +And whatever belongeth unto ME in all seas, my in-and-for-me in all +things--fish THAT out for me, bring THAT up to me: for that do I wait, +the wickedest of all fish-catchers. + +Out! out! my fishing-hook! In and down, thou bait of my happiness! Drip +thy sweetest dew, thou honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing-hook, into +the belly of all black affliction! + +Look out, look out, mine eye! Oh, how many seas round about me, what +dawning human futures! And above me--what rosy red stillness! What +unclouded silence! + + + + +LXII. THE CRY OF DISTRESS. + +The next day sat Zarathustra again on the stone in front of his cave, +whilst his animals roved about in the world outside to bring home new +food,--also new honey: for Zarathustra had spent and wasted the old +honey to the very last particle. When he thus sat, however, with a +stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure on the earth, and +reflecting--verily! not upon himself and his shadow,--all at once he +startled and shrank back: for he saw another shadow beside his own. +And when he hastily looked around and stood up, behold, there stood the +soothsayer beside him, the same whom he had once given to eat and drink +at his table, the proclaimer of the great weariness, who taught: "All is +alike, nothing is worth while, the world is without meaning, knowledge +strangleth." But his face had changed since then; and when Zarathustra +looked into his eyes, his heart was startled once more: so much evil +announcement and ashy-grey lightnings passed over that countenance. + +The soothsayer, who had perceived what went on in Zarathustra's soul, +wiped his face with his hand, as if he would wipe out the impression; +the same did also Zarathustra. And when both of them had thus silently +composed and strengthened themselves, they gave each other the hand, as +a token that they wanted once more to recognise each other. + +"Welcome hither," said Zarathustra, "thou soothsayer of the great +weariness, not in vain shalt thou once have been my messmate and guest. +Eat and drink also with me to-day, and forgive it that a cheerful old +man sitteth with thee at table!"--"A cheerful old man?" answered the +soothsayer, shaking his head, "but whoever thou art, or wouldst be, O +Zarathustra, thou hast been here aloft the longest time,--in a little +while thy bark shall no longer rest on dry land!"--"Do I then rest +on dry land?"--asked Zarathustra, laughing.--"The waves around thy +mountain," answered the soothsayer, "rise and rise, the waves of great +distress and affliction: they will soon raise thy bark also and carry +thee away."--Thereupon was Zarathustra silent and wondered.--"Dost thou +still hear nothing?" continued the soothsayer: "doth it not rush and +roar out of the depth?"--Zarathustra was silent once more and listened: +then heard he a long, long cry, which the abysses threw to one another +and passed on; for none of them wished to retain it: so evil did it +sound. + +"Thou ill announcer," said Zarathustra at last, "that is a cry of +distress, and the cry of a man; it may come perhaps out of a black sea. +But what doth human distress matter to me! My last sin which hath been +reserved for me,--knowest thou what it is called?" + +--"PITY!" answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and raised +both his hands aloft--"O Zarathustra, I have come that I may seduce thee +to thy last sin!"-- + +And hardly had those words been uttered when there sounded the cry +once more, and longer and more alarming than before--also much nearer. +"Hearest thou? Hearest thou, O Zarathustra?" called out the soothsayer, +"the cry concerneth thee, it calleth thee: Come, come, come; it is time, +it is the highest time!"-- + +Zarathustra was silent thereupon, confused and staggered; at last he +asked, like one who hesitateth in himself: "And who is it that there +calleth me?" + +"But thou knowest it, certainly," answered the soothsayer warmly, "why +dost thou conceal thyself? It is THE HIGHER MAN that crieth for thee!" + +"The higher man?" cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken: "what wanteth HE? +What wanteth HE? The higher man! What wanteth he here?"--and his skin +covered with perspiration. + +The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra's alarm, but listened +and listened in the downward direction. When, however, it had been still +there for a long while, he looked behind, and saw Zarathustra standing +trembling. + +"O Zarathustra," he began, with sorrowful voice, "thou dost not stand +there like one whose happiness maketh him giddy: thou wilt have to dance +lest thou tumble down! + +But although thou shouldst dance before me, and leap all thy side-leaps, +no one may say unto me: 'Behold, here danceth the last joyous man!' + +In vain would any one come to this height who sought HIM here: caves +would he find, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-places for hidden ones; +but not lucky mines, nor treasure-chambers, nor new gold-veins of +happiness. + +Happiness--how indeed could one find happiness among such buried-alive +and solitary ones! Must I yet seek the last happiness on the Happy +Isles, and far away among forgotten seas? + +But all is alike, nothing is worth while, no seeking is of service, +there are no longer any Happy Isles!"-- + +Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra +again became serene and assured, like one who hath come out of a deep +chasm into the light. "Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!" exclaimed he with a +strong voice, and stroked his beard--"THAT do I know better! There are +still Happy Isles! Silence THEREON, thou sighing sorrow-sack! + +Cease to splash THEREON, thou rain-cloud of the forenoon! Do I not +already stand here wet with thy misery, and drenched like a dog? + +Now do I shake myself and run away from thee, that I may again become +dry: thereat mayest thou not wonder! Do I seem to thee discourteous? +Here however is MY court. + +But as regards the higher man: well! I shall seek him at once in those +forests: FROM THENCE came his cry. Perhaps he is there hard beset by an +evil beast. + +He is in MY domain: therein shall he receive no scath! And verily, there +are many evil beasts about me."-- + +With those words Zarathustra turned around to depart. Then said the +soothsayer: "O Zarathustra, thou art a rogue! + +I know it well: thou wouldst fain be rid of me! Rather wouldst thou run +into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts! + +But what good will it do thee? In the evening wilt thou have me again: +in thine own cave will I sit, patient and heavy like a block--and wait +for thee!" + +"So be it!" shouted back Zarathustra, as he went away: "and what is mine +in my cave belongeth also unto thee, my guest! + +Shouldst thou however find honey therein, well! just lick it up, thou +growling bear, and sweeten thy soul! For in the evening we want both to +be in good spirits; + +--In good spirits and joyful, because this day hath come to an end! And +thou thyself shalt dance to my lays, as my dancing-bear. + +Thou dost not believe this? Thou shakest thy head? Well! Cheer up, old +bear! But I also--am a soothsayer." + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LXIII. TALK WITH THE KINGS. + +1. + +Ere Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and +forests, he saw all at once a strange procession. Right on the path +which he was about to descend came two kings walking, bedecked with +crowns and purple girdles, and variegated like flamingoes: they drove +before them a laden ass. "What do these kings want in my domain?" said +Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and hid himself hastily behind +a thicket. When however the kings approached to him, he said half-aloud, +like one speaking only to himself: "Strange! Strange! How doth this +harmonise? Two kings do I see--and only one ass!" + +Thereupon the two kings made a halt; they smiled and looked towards the +spot whence the voice proceeded, and afterwards looked into each other's +faces. "Such things do we also think among ourselves," said the king on +the right, "but we do not utter them." + +The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered: +"That may perhaps be a goat-herd. Or an anchorite who hath lived too +long among rocks and trees. For no society at all spoileth also good +manners." + +"Good manners?" replied angrily and bitterly the other king: "what +then do we run out of the way of? Is it not 'good manners'? Our 'good +society'? + +Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goat-herds, than with +our gilded, false, over-rouged populace--though it call itself 'good +society.' + +--Though it call itself 'nobility.' But there all is false and foul, +above all the blood--thanks to old evil diseases and worse curers. + +The best and dearest to me at present is still a sound peasant, coarse, +artful, obstinate and enduring: that is at present the noblest type. + +The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type should be +master! But it is the kingdom of the populace--I no longer allow +anything to be imposed upon me. The populace, however--that meaneth, +hodgepodge. + +Populace-hodgepodge: therein is everything mixed with everything, saint +and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah's ark. + +Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knoweth any +longer how to reverence: it is THAT precisely that we run away from. +They are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they gild palm-leaves. + +This loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have become false, +draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors, +show-pieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and whosoever at present +trafficketh for power. + +We ARE NOT the first men--and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of +this imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted. + +From the rabble have we gone out of the way, from all those bawlers and +scribe-blowflies, from the trader-stench, the ambition-fidgeting, the +bad breath--: fie, to live among the rabble; + +--Fie, to stand for the first men among the rabble! Ah, loathing! +Loathing! Loathing! What doth it now matter about us kings!"-- + +"Thine old sickness seizeth thee," said here the king on the left, "thy +loathing seizeth thee, my poor brother. Thou knowest, however, that some +one heareth us." + +Immediately thereupon, Zarathustra, who had opened ears and eyes to this +talk, rose from his hiding-place, advanced towards the kings, and thus +began: + +"He who hearkeneth unto you, he who gladly hearkeneth unto you, is +called Zarathustra. + +I am Zarathustra who once said: 'What doth it now matter about kings!' +Forgive me; I rejoiced when ye said to each other: 'What doth it matter +about us kings!' + +Here, however, is MY domain and jurisdiction: what may ye be seeking in +my domain? Perhaps, however, ye have FOUND on your way what _I_ seek: +namely, the higher man." + +When the kings heard this, they beat upon their breasts and said with +one voice: "We are recognised! + +With the sword of thine utterance severest thou the thickest darkness of +our hearts. Thou hast discovered our distress; for lo! we are on our way +to find the higher man-- + +--The man that is higher than we, although we are kings. To him do we +convey this ass. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on +earth. + +There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty +of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becometh false +and distorted and monstrous. + +And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then +riseth and riseth the populace in honour, and at last saith even the +populace-virtue: 'Lo, I alone am virtue!'"-- + +What have I just heard? answered Zarathustra. What wisdom in kings! I +am enchanted, and verily, I have already promptings to make a rhyme +thereon:-- + +--Even if it should happen to be a rhyme not suited for every one's +ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears. Well +then! Well now! + +(Here, however, it happened that the ass also found utterance: it said +distinctly and with malevolence, Y-E-A.) + +'Twas once--methinks year one of our blessed Lord,--Drunk without wine, +the Sybil thus deplored:--"How ill things go! Decline! Decline! Ne'er +sank the world so low! Rome now hath turned harlot and harlot-stew, +Rome's Caesar a beast, and God--hath turned Jew! + +2. + +With those rhymes of Zarathustra the kings were delighted; the king on +the right, however, said: "O Zarathustra, how well it was that we set +out to see thee! + +For thine enemies showed us thy likeness in their mirror: there lookedst +thou with the grimace of a devil, and sneeringly: so that we were afraid +of thee. + +But what good did it do! Always didst thou prick us anew in heart and +ear with thy sayings. Then did we say at last: What doth it matter how +he look! + +We must HEAR him; him who teacheth: 'Ye shall love peace as a means to +new wars, and the short peace more than the long!' + +No one ever spake such warlike words: 'What is good? To be brave is +good. It is the good war that halloweth every cause.' + +O Zarathustra, our fathers' blood stirred in our veins at such words: it +was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks. + +When the swords ran among one another like red-spotted serpents, then +did our fathers become fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to +them languid and lukewarm, the long peace, however, made them ashamed. + +How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw on the wall brightly +furbished, dried-up swords! Like those they thirsted for war. For a +sword thirsteth to drink blood, and sparkleth with desire."-- + +--When the kings thus discoursed and talked eagerly of the happiness of +their fathers, there came upon Zarathustra no little desire to mock at +their eagerness: for evidently they were very peaceable kings whom he +saw before him, kings with old and refined features. But he restrained +himself. "Well!" said he, "thither leadeth the way, there lieth the +cave of Zarathustra; and this day is to have a long evening! At present, +however, a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from you. + +It will honour my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it: but, to be +sure, ye will have to wait long! + +Well! What of that! Where doth one at present learn better to wait +than at courts? And the whole virtue of kings that hath remained unto +them--is it not called to-day: ABILITY to wait?" + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LXIV. THE LEECH. + +And Zarathustra went thoughtfully on, further and lower down, through +forests and past moory bottoms; as it happeneth, however, to every one +who meditateth upon hard matters, he trod thereby unawares upon a man. +And lo, there spurted into his face all at once a cry of pain, and two +curses and twenty bad invectives, so that in his fright he raised his +stick and also struck the trodden one. Immediately afterwards, however, +he regained his composure, and his heart laughed at the folly he had +just committed. + +"Pardon me," said he to the trodden one, who had got up enraged, and had +seated himself, "pardon me, and hear first of all a parable. + +As a wanderer who dreameth of remote things on a lonesome highway, +runneth unawares against a sleeping dog, a dog which lieth in the sun: + +--As both of them then start up and snap at each other, like deadly +enemies, those two beings mortally frightened--so did it happen unto us. + +And yet! And yet--how little was lacking for them to caress each other, +that dog and that lonesome one! Are they not both--lonesome ones!" + +--"Whoever thou art," said the trodden one, still enraged, "thou +treadest also too nigh me with thy parable, and not only with thy foot! + +Lo! am I then a dog?"--And thereupon the sitting one got up, and pulled +his naked arm out of the swamp. For at first he had lain outstretched +on the ground, hidden and indiscernible, like those who lie in wait for +swamp-game. + +"But whatever art thou about!" called out Zarathustra in alarm, for he +saw a deal of blood streaming over the naked arm,--"what hath hurt thee? +Hath an evil beast bit thee, thou unfortunate one?" + +The bleeding one laughed, still angry, "What matter is it to thee!" said +he, and was about to go on. "Here am I at home and in my province. +Let him question me whoever will: to a dolt, however, I shall hardly +answer." + +"Thou art mistaken," said Zarathustra sympathetically, and held him +fast; "thou art mistaken. Here thou art not at home, but in my domain, +and therein shall no one receive any hurt. + +Call me however what thou wilt--I am who I must be. I call myself +Zarathustra. + +Well! Up thither is the way to Zarathustra's cave: it is not far,--wilt +thou not attend to thy wounds at my home? + +It hath gone badly with thee, thou unfortunate one, in this life: first +a beast bit thee, and then--a man trod upon thee!"-- + +When however the trodden one had heard the name of Zarathustra he was +transformed. "What happeneth unto me!" he exclaimed, "WHO preoccupieth +me so much in this life as this one man, namely Zarathustra, and that +one animal that liveth on blood, the leech? + +For the sake of the leech did I lie here by this swamp, like a fisher, +and already had mine outstretched arm been bitten ten times, when there +biteth a still finer leech at my blood, Zarathustra himself! + +O happiness! O miracle! Praised be this day which enticed me into the +swamp! Praised be the best, the livest cupping-glass, that at present +liveth; praised be the great conscience-leech Zarathustra!"-- + +Thus spake the trodden one, and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and +their refined reverential style. "Who art thou?" asked he, and gave +him his hand, "there is much to clear up and elucidate between us, but +already methinketh pure clear day is dawning." + +"I am THE SPIRITUALLY CONSCIENTIOUS ONE," answered he who was asked, +"and in matters of the spirit it is difficult for any one to take it +more rigorously, more restrictedly, and more severely than I, except him +from whom I learnt it, Zarathustra himself. + +Better know nothing than half-know many things! Better be a fool on +one's own account, than a sage on other people's approbation! I--go to +the basis: + +--What matter if it be great or small? If it be called swamp or sky? +A handbreadth of basis is enough for me, if it be actually basis and +ground! + +--A handbreadth of basis: thereon can one stand. In the true +knowing-knowledge there is nothing great and nothing small." + +"Then thou art perhaps an expert on the leech?" asked Zarathustra; "and +thou investigatest the leech to its ultimate basis, thou conscientious +one?" + +"O Zarathustra," answered the trodden one, "that would be something +immense; how could I presume to do so! + +That, however, of which I am master and knower, is the BRAIN of the +leech:--that is MY world! + +And it is also a world! Forgive it, however, that my pride here findeth +expression, for here I have not mine equal. Therefore said I: 'here am I +at home.' + +How long have I investigated this one thing, the brain of the leech, so +that here the slippery truth might no longer slip from me! Here is MY +domain! + +--For the sake of this did I cast everything else aside, for the sake of +this did everything else become indifferent to me; and close beside my +knowledge lieth my black ignorance. + +My spiritual conscience requireth from me that it should be so--that I +should know one thing, and not know all else: they are a loathing unto +me, all the semi-spiritual, all the hazy, hovering, and visionary. + +Where mine honesty ceaseth, there am I blind, and want also to be blind. +Where I want to know, however, there want I also to be honest--namely, +severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel and inexorable. + +Because THOU once saidest, O Zarathustra: 'Spirit is life which itself +cutteth into life';--that led and allured me to thy doctrine. And +verily, with mine own blood have I increased mine own knowledge!" + +--"As the evidence indicateth," broke in Zarathustra; for still was the +blood flowing down on the naked arm of the conscientious one. For there +had ten leeches bitten into it. + +"O thou strange fellow, how much doth this very evidence teach +me--namely, thou thyself! And not all, perhaps, might I pour into thy +rigorous ear! + +Well then! We part here! But I would fain find thee again. Up thither is +the way to my cave: to-night shalt thou there be my welcome guest! + +Fain would I also make amends to thy body for Zarathustra treading upon +thee with his feet: I think about that. Just now, however, a cry of +distress calleth me hastily away from thee." + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LXV. THE MAGICIAN. + +1. + +When however Zarathustra had gone round a rock, then saw he on the same +path, not far below him, a man who threw his limbs about like a maniac, +and at last tumbled to the ground on his belly. "Halt!" said then +Zarathustra to his heart, "he there must surely be the higher man, from +him came that dreadful cry of distress,--I will see if I can help him." +When, however, he ran to the spot where the man lay on the ground, +he found a trembling old man, with fixed eyes; and in spite of all +Zarathustra's efforts to lift him and set him again on his feet, it was +all in vain. The unfortunate one, also, did not seem to notice that some +one was beside him; on the contrary, he continually looked around with +moving gestures, like one forsaken and isolated from all the world. +At last, however, after much trembling, and convulsion, and +curling-himself-up, he began to lament thus: + + Who warm'th me, who lov'th me still? + Give ardent fingers! + Give heartening charcoal-warmers! + Prone, outstretched, trembling, + Like him, half dead and cold, whose feet one warm'th-- + And shaken, ah! by unfamiliar fevers, + Shivering with sharpened, icy-cold frost-arrows, + By thee pursued, my fancy! + Ineffable! Recondite! Sore-frightening! + Thou huntsman 'hind the cloud-banks! + Now lightning-struck by thee, + Thou mocking eye that me in darkness watcheth: + --Thus do I lie, + Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed + With all eternal torture, + And smitten + By thee, cruellest huntsman, + Thou unfamiliar--GOD... + + Smite deeper! + Smite yet once more! + Pierce through and rend my heart! + What mean'th this torture + With dull, indented arrows? + Why look'st thou hither, + Of human pain not weary, + With mischief-loving, godly flash-glances? + Not murder wilt thou, + But torture, torture? + For why--ME torture, + Thou mischief-loving, unfamiliar God?-- + + Ha! Ha! + Thou stealest nigh + In midnight's gloomy hour?... + What wilt thou? + Speak! + Thou crowdst me, pressest-- + Ha! now far too closely! + Thou hearst me breathing, + Thou o'erhearst my heart, + Thou ever jealous one! + --Of what, pray, ever jealous? + Off! Off! + For why the ladder? + Wouldst thou GET IN? + To heart in-clamber? + To mine own secretest + Conceptions in-clamber? + Shameless one! Thou unknown one!--Thief! + What seekst thou by thy stealing? + What seekst thou by thy hearkening? + What seekst thou by thy torturing? + Thou torturer! + Thou--hangman-God! + Or shall I, as the mastiffs do, + Roll me before thee? + And cringing, enraptured, frantical, + My tail friendly--waggle! + + In vain! + Goad further! + Cruellest goader! + No dog--thy game just am I, + Cruellest huntsman! + Thy proudest of captives, + Thou robber 'hind the cloud-banks... + Speak finally! + Thou lightning-veiled one! Thou unknown one! Speak! + What wilt thou, highway-ambusher, from--ME? + What WILT thou, unfamiliar--God? + What? + Ransom-gold? + How much of ransom-gold? + Solicit much--that bid'th my pride! + And be concise--that bid'th mine other pride! + + Ha! Ha! + ME--wantst thou? me? + --Entire?... + + Ha! Ha! + And torturest me, fool that thou art, + Dead-torturest quite my pride? + Give LOVE to me--who warm'th me still? + Who lov'th me still?-- + Give ardent fingers + Give heartening charcoal-warmers, + Give me, the lonesomest, + The ice (ah! seven-fold frozen ice + For very enemies, + For foes, doth make one thirst). + Give, yield to me, + Cruellest foe, + --THYSELF!-- + + Away! + There fled he surely, + My final, only comrade, + My greatest foe, + Mine unfamiliar-- + My hangman-God!... + + --Nay! + Come thou back! + WITH all of thy great tortures! + To me the last of lonesome ones, + Oh, come thou back! + All my hot tears in streamlets trickle + Their course to thee! + And all my final hearty fervour-- + Up-glow'th to THEE! + Oh, come thou back, + Mine unfamiliar God! my PAIN! + My final bliss! + +2. + +--Here, however, Zarathustra could no longer restrain himself; he took +his staff and struck the wailer with all his might. "Stop this," cried +he to him with wrathful laughter, "stop this, thou stage-player! Thou +false coiner! Thou liar from the very heart! I know thee well! + +I will soon make warm legs to thee, thou evil magician: I know well +how--to make it hot for such as thou!" + +--"Leave off," said the old man, and sprang up from the ground, "strike +me no more, O Zarathustra! I did it only for amusement! + +That kind of thing belongeth to mine art. Thee thyself, I wanted to put +to the proof when I gave this performance. And verily, thou hast well +detected me! + +But thou thyself--hast given me no small proof of thyself: thou art +HARD, thou wise Zarathustra! Hard strikest thou with thy 'truths,' thy +cudgel forceth from me--THIS truth!" + +--"Flatter not," answered Zarathustra, still excited and frowning, +"thou stage-player from the heart! Thou art false: why speakest thou--of +truth! + +Thou peacock of peacocks, thou sea of vanity; WHAT didst thou represent +before me, thou evil magician; WHOM was I meant to believe in when thou +wailedst in such wise?" + +"THE PENITENT IN SPIRIT," said the old man, "it was him--I represented; +thou thyself once devisedst this expression-- + +--The poet and magician who at last turneth his spirit against himself, +the transformed one who freezeth to death by his bad science and +conscience. + +And just acknowledge it: it was long, O Zarathustra, before thou +discoveredst my trick and lie! Thou BELIEVEDST in my distress when thou +heldest my head with both thy hands,-- + +--I heard thee lament 'we have loved him too little, loved him too +little!' Because I so far deceived thee, my wickedness rejoiced in me." + +"Thou mayest have deceived subtler ones than I," said Zarathustra +sternly. "I am not on my guard against deceivers; I HAVE TO BE without +precaution: so willeth my lot. + +Thou, however,--MUST deceive: so far do I know thee! Thou must ever be +equivocal, trivocal, quadrivocal, and quinquivocal! Even what thou hast +now confessed, is not nearly true enough nor false enough for me! + +Thou bad false coiner, how couldst thou do otherwise! Thy very malady +wouldst thou whitewash if thou showed thyself naked to thy physician. + +Thus didst thou whitewash thy lie before me when thou saidst: 'I did +so ONLY for amusement!' There was also SERIOUSNESS therein, thou ART +something of a penitent-in-spirit! + +I divine thee well: thou hast become the enchanter of all the world; but +for thyself thou hast no lie or artifice left,--thou art disenchanted to +thyself! + +Thou hast reaped disgust as thy one truth. No word in thee is any longer +genuine, but thy mouth is so: that is to say, the disgust that cleaveth +unto thy mouth."-- + +--"Who art thou at all!" cried here the old magician with defiant voice, +"who dareth to speak thus unto ME, the greatest man now living?"--and a +green flash shot from his eye at Zarathustra. But immediately after he +changed, and said sadly: + +"O Zarathustra, I am weary of it, I am disgusted with mine arts, I am +not GREAT, why do I dissemble! But thou knowest it well--I sought for +greatness! + +A great man I wanted to appear, and persuaded many; but the lie hath +been beyond my power. On it do I collapse. + +O Zarathustra, everything is a lie in me; but that I collapse--this my +collapsing is GENUINE!"-- + +"It honoureth thee," said Zarathustra gloomily, looking down with +sidelong glance, "it honoureth thee that thou soughtest for greatness, +but it betrayeth thee also. Thou art not great. + +Thou bad old magician, THAT is the best and the honestest thing I honour +in thee, that thou hast become weary of thyself, and hast expressed it: +'I am not great.' + +THEREIN do I honour thee as a penitent-in-spirit, and although only for +the twinkling of an eye, in that one moment wast thou--genuine. + +But tell me, what seekest thou here in MY forests and rocks? And if thou +hast put thyself in MY way, what proof of me wouldst thou have?-- + +--Wherein didst thou put ME to the test?" + +Thus spake Zarathustra, and his eyes sparkled. But the old magician kept +silence for a while; then said he: "Did I put thee to the test? I--seek +only. + +O Zarathustra, I seek a genuine one, a right one, a simple one, an +unequivocal one, a man of perfect honesty, a vessel of wisdom, a saint +of knowledge, a great man! + +Knowest thou it not, O Zarathustra? I SEEK ZARATHUSTRA." + +--And here there arose a long silence between them: Zarathustra, +however, became profoundly absorbed in thought, so that he shut his +eyes. But afterwards coming back to the situation, he grasped the hand +of the magician, and said, full of politeness and policy: + +"Well! Up thither leadeth the way, there is the cave of Zarathustra. In +it mayest thou seek him whom thou wouldst fain find. + +And ask counsel of mine animals, mine eagle and my serpent: they shall +help thee to seek. My cave however is large. + +I myself, to be sure--I have as yet seen no great man. That which is +great, the acutest eye is at present insensible to it. It is the kingdom +of the populace. + +Many a one have I found who stretched and inflated himself, and the +people cried: 'Behold; a great man!' But what good do all bellows do! +The wind cometh out at last. + +At last bursteth the frog which hath inflated itself too long: then +cometh out the wind. To prick a swollen one in the belly, I call good +pastime. Hear that, ye boys! + +Our to-day is of the populace: who still KNOWETH what is great and what +is small! Who could there seek successfully for greatness! A fool only: +it succeedeth with fools. + +Thou seekest for great men, thou strange fool? Who TAUGHT that to thee? +Is to-day the time for it? Oh, thou bad seeker, why dost thou--tempt +me?"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra, comforted in his heart, and went laughing on his +way. + + + + +LXVI. OUT OF SERVICE. + +Not long, however, after Zarathustra had freed himself from the +magician, he again saw a person sitting beside the path which he +followed, namely a tall, black man, with a haggard, pale countenance: +THIS MAN grieved him exceedingly. "Alas," said he to his heart, "there +sitteth disguised affliction; methinketh he is of the type of the +priests: what do THEY want in my domain? + +What! Hardly have I escaped from that magician, and must another +necromancer again run across my path,-- + +--Some sorcerer with laying-on-of-hands, some sombre wonder-worker by +the grace of God, some anointed world-maligner, whom, may the devil +take! + +But the devil is never at the place which would be his right place: he +always cometh too late, that cursed dwarf and club-foot!"-- + +Thus cursed Zarathustra impatiently in his heart, and considered how +with averted look he might slip past the black man. But behold, it came +about otherwise. For at the same moment had the sitting one already +perceived him; and not unlike one whom an unexpected happiness +overtaketh, he sprang to his feet, and went straight towards +Zarathustra. + +"Whoever thou art, thou traveller," said he, "help a strayed one, a +seeker, an old man, who may here easily come to grief! + +The world here is strange to me, and remote; wild beasts also did I hear +howling; and he who could have given me protection--he is himself no +more. + +I was seeking the pious man, a saint and an anchorite, who, alone in his +forest, had not yet heard of what all the world knoweth at present." + +"WHAT doth all the world know at present?" asked Zarathustra. "Perhaps +that the old God no longer liveth, in whom all the world once believed?" + +"Thou sayest it," answered the old man sorrowfully. "And I served that +old God until his last hour. + +Now, however, am I out of service, without master, and yet not free; +likewise am I no longer merry even for an hour, except it be in +recollections. + +Therefore did I ascend into these mountains, that I might finally have +a festival for myself once more, as becometh an old pope and +church-father: for know it, that I am the last pope!--a festival of +pious recollections and divine services. + +Now, however, is he himself dead, the most pious of men, the saint in +the forest, who praised his God constantly with singing and mumbling. + +He himself found I no longer when I found his cot--but two wolves found +I therein, which howled on account of his death,--for all animals loved +him. Then did I haste away. + +Had I thus come in vain into these forests and mountains? Then did my +heart determine that I should seek another, the most pious of all +those who believe not in God--, my heart determined that I should seek +Zarathustra!" + +Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood +before him. Zarathustra however seized the hand of the old pope and +regarded it a long while with admiration. + +"Lo! thou venerable one," said he then, "what a fine and long hand! That +is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed blessings. Now, however, doth +it hold fast him whom thou seekest, me, Zarathustra. + +It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith: 'Who is ungodlier than I, +that I may enjoy his teaching?'"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and +arrear-thoughts of the old pope. At last the latter began: + +"He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost him most--: + +--Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who +could rejoice at that!"-- + +--"Thou servedst him to the last?" asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after +a deep silence, "thou knowest HOW he died? Is it true what they say, +that sympathy choked him; + +--That he saw how MAN hung on the cross, and could not endure it;--that +his love to man became his hell, and at last his death?"-- + +The old pope however did not answer, but looked aside timidly, with a +painful and gloomy expression. + +"Let him go," said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation, still +looking the old man straight in the eye. + +"Let him go, he is gone. And though it honoureth thee that thou speakest +only in praise of this dead one, yet thou knowest as well as I WHO he +was, and that he went curious ways." + +"To speak before three eyes," said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind +of one eye), "in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra +himself--and may well be so. + +My love served him long years, my will followed all his will. A good +servant, however, knoweth everything, and many a thing even which a +master hideth from himself. + +He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Verily, he did not come by his +son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith standeth +adultery. + +Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of +love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one +loveth irrespective of reward and requital. + +When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and +revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites. + +At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful, +more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old +grandmother. + +There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney-corner, fretting on account +of his weak legs, world-weary, will-weary, and one day he suffocated of +his all-too-great pity."-- + +"Thou old pope," said here Zarathustra interposing, "hast thou seen THAT +with thine eyes? It could well have happened in that way: in that way, +AND also otherwise. When Gods die they always die many kinds of death. + +Well! At all events, one way or other--he is gone! He was counter to the +taste of mine ears and eyes; worse than that I should not like to say +against him. + +I love everything that looketh bright and speaketh honestly. But +he--thou knowest it, forsooth, thou old priest, there was something of +thy type in him, the priest-type--he was equivocal. + +He was also indistinct. How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because +we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly? + +And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him +badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them? + +Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not learned +thoroughly! That he took revenge on his pots and creations, however, +because they turned out badly--that was a sin against GOOD TASTE. + +There is also good taste in piety: THIS at last said: 'Away with SUCH +a God! Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on one's own +account, better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!'" + +--"What do I hear!" said then the old pope, with intent ears; "O +Zarathustra, thou art more pious than thou believest, with such an +unbelief! Some God in thee hath converted thee to thine ungodliness. + +Is it not thy piety itself which no longer letteth thee believe in a +God? And thine over-great honesty will yet lead thee even beyond good +and evil! + +Behold, what hath been reserved for thee? Thou hast eyes and hands and +mouth, which have been predestined for blessing from eternity. One doth +not bless with the hand alone. + +Nigh unto thee, though thou professest to be the ungodliest one, I feel +a hale and holy odour of long benedictions: I feel glad and grieved +thereby. + +Let me be thy guest, O Zarathustra, for a single night! Nowhere on earth +shall I now feel better than with thee!"-- + +"Amen! So shall it be!" said Zarathustra, with great astonishment; "up +thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of Zarathustra. + +Gladly, forsooth, would I conduct thee thither myself, thou venerable +one; for I love all pious men. But now a cry of distress calleth me +hastily away from thee. + +In my domain shall no one come to grief; my cave is a good haven. And +best of all would I like to put every sorrowful one again on firm land +and firm legs. + +Who, however, could take THY melancholy off thy shoulders? For that I am +too weak. Long, verily, should we have to wait until some one re-awoke +thy God for thee. + +For that old God liveth no more: he is indeed dead."-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LXVII. THE UGLIEST MAN. + +--And again did Zarathustra's feet run through mountains and forests, +and his eyes sought and sought, but nowhere was he to be seen whom they +wanted to see--the sorely distressed sufferer and crier. On the whole +way, however, he rejoiced in his heart and was full of gratitude. "What +good things," said he, "hath this day given me, as amends for its bad +beginning! What strange interlocutors have I found! + +At their words will I now chew a long while as at good corn; small +shall my teeth grind and crush them, until they flow like milk into my +soul!"-- + +When, however, the path again curved round a rock, all at once the +landscape changed, and Zarathustra entered into a realm of death. Here +bristled aloft black and red cliffs, without any grass, tree, or bird's +voice. For it was a valley which all animals avoided, even the beasts of +prey, except that a species of ugly, thick, green serpent came here to +die when they became old. Therefore the shepherds called this valley: +"Serpent-death." + +Zarathustra, however, became absorbed in dark recollections, for it +seemed to him as if he had once before stood in this valley. And much +heaviness settled on his mind, so that he walked slowly and always more +slowly, and at last stood still. Then, however, when he opened his eyes, +he saw something sitting by the wayside shaped like a man, and hardly +like a man, something nondescript. And all at once there came over +Zarathustra a great shame, because he had gazed on such a thing. +Blushing up to the very roots of his white hair, he turned aside his +glance, and raised his foot that he might leave this ill-starred place. +Then, however, became the dead wilderness vocal: for from the ground a +noise welled up, gurgling and rattling, as water gurgleth and rattleth +at night through stopped-up water-pipes; and at last it turned into +human voice and human speech:--it sounded thus: + +"Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Say, say! WHAT IS THE REVENGE +ON THE WITNESS? + +I entice thee back; here is smooth ice! See to it, see to it, that thy +pride doth not here break its legs! + +Thou thinkest thyself wise, thou proud Zarathustra! Read then the +riddle, thou hard nut-cracker,--the riddle that I am! Say then: who am +_I_!" + +--When however Zarathustra had heard these words,--what think ye then +took place in his soul? PITY OVERCAME HIM; and he sank down all at +once, like an oak that hath long withstood many tree-fellers,--heavily, +suddenly, to the terror even of those who meant to fell it. But +immediately he got up again from the ground, and his countenance became +stern. + +"I know thee well," said he, with a brazen voice, "THOU ART THE MURDERER +OF GOD! Let me go. + +Thou couldst not ENDURE him who beheld THEE,--who ever beheld thee +through and through, thou ugliest man. Thou tookest revenge on this +witness!" + +Thus spake Zarathustra and was about to go; but the nondescript grasped +at a corner of his garment and began anew to gurgle and seek for words. +"Stay," said he at last-- + +--"Stay! Do not pass by! I have divined what axe it was that struck thee +to the ground: hail to thee, O Zarathustra, that thou art again upon thy +feet! + +Thou hast divined, I know it well, how the man feeleth who killed +him,--the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here beside me; it is not to +no purpose. + +To whom would I go but unto thee? Stay, sit down! Do not however look at +me! Honour thus--mine ugliness! + +They persecute me: now art THOU my last refuge. NOT with their hatred, +NOT with their bailiffs;--Oh, such persecution would I mock at, and be +proud and cheerful! + +Hath not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted ones? And +he who persecuteth well learneth readily to be OBSEQUENT--when once he +is--put behind! But it is their PITY-- + +--Their pity is it from which I flee away and flee to thee. O +Zarathustra, protect me, thou, my last refuge, thou sole one who +divinedst me: + +--Thou hast divined how the man feeleth who killed HIM. Stay! And if +thou wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way that I came. THAT way +is bad. + +Art thou angry with me because I have already racked language too long? +Because I have already counselled thee? But know that it is I, the +ugliest man, + +--Who have also the largest, heaviest feet. Where _I_ have gone, the way +is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction. + +But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst--I saw it +well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra. + +Every one else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity, in look and +speech. But for that--I am not beggar enough: that didst thou divine. + +For that I am too RICH, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most +unutterable! Thy shame, O Zarathustra, HONOURED me! + +With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful,--that I might +find the only one who at present teacheth that 'pity is obtrusive'-- +thyself, O Zarathustra! + +--Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is +offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the +virtue that rusheth to do so. + +THAT however--namely, pity--is called virtue itself at present by +all petty people:--they have no reverence for great misfortune, great +ugliness, great failure. + +Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging +flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people. + +As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent +head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and +souls. + +Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: SO +we have at last given them power as well;--and now do they teach that +'good is only what petty people call good.' + +And 'truth' is at present what the preacher spake who himself sprang +from them, that singular saint and advocate of the petty people, who +testified of himself: 'I--am the truth.' + +That immodest one hath long made the petty people greatly puffed up,--he +who taught no small error when he taught: 'I--am the truth.' + +Hath an immodest one ever been answered more courteously?--Thou, +however, O Zarathustra, passedst him by, and saidst: 'Nay! Nay! Three +times Nay!' + +Thou warnedst against his error; thou warnedst--the first to do +so--against pity:--not every one, not none, but thyself and thy type. + +Thou art ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and verily when +thou sayest: 'From pity there cometh a heavy cloud; take heed, ye men!' + +--When thou teachest: 'All creators are hard, all great love is beyond +their pity:' O Zarathustra, how well versed dost thou seem to me in +weather-signs! + +Thou thyself, however,--warn thyself also against THY pity! For many are +on their way to thee, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, +freezing ones-- + +I warn thee also against myself. Thou hast read my best, my worst +riddle, myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that felleth thee. + +But he--HAD TO die: he looked with eyes which beheld EVERYTHING,--he +beheld men's depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness. + +His pity knew no modesty: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most +prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die. + +He ever beheld ME: on such a witness I would have revenge--or not live +myself. + +The God who beheld everything, AND ALSO MAN: that God had to die! Man +cannot ENDURE it that such a witness should live." + +Thus spake the ugliest man. Zarathustra however got up, and prepared to +go on: for he felt frozen to the very bowels. + +"Thou nondescript," said he, "thou warnedst me against thy path. As +thanks for it I praise mine to thee. Behold, up thither is the cave of +Zarathustra. + +My cave is large and deep and hath many corners; there findeth he +that is most hidden his hiding-place. And close beside it, there are +a hundred lurking-places and by-places for creeping, fluttering, and +hopping creatures. + +Thou outcast, who hast cast thyself out, thou wilt not live amongst men +and men's pity? Well then, do like me! Thus wilt thou learn also from +me; only the doer learneth. + +And talk first and foremost to mine animals! The proudest animal and the +wisest animal--they might well be the right counsellors for us both!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra and went his way, more thoughtfully and slowly +even than before: for he asked himself many things, and hardly knew what +to answer. + +"How poor indeed is man," thought he in his heart, "how ugly, how +wheezy, how full of hidden shame! + +They tell me that man loveth himself. Ah, how great must that self-love +be! How much contempt is opposed to it! + +Even this man hath loved himself, as he hath despised himself,--a great +lover methinketh he is, and a great despiser. + +No one have I yet found who more thoroughly despised himself: even THAT +is elevation. Alas, was THIS perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard? + +I love the great despisers. Man is something that hath to be +surpassed."-- + + + + +LXVIII. THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR. + +When Zarathustra had left the ugliest man, he was chilled and felt +lonesome: for much coldness and lonesomeness came over his spirit, so +that even his limbs became colder thereby. When, however, he wandered +on and on, uphill and down, at times past green meadows, though also +sometimes over wild stony couches where formerly perhaps an impatient +brook had made its bed, then he turned all at once warmer and heartier +again. + +"What hath happened unto me?" he asked himself, "something warm and +living quickeneth me; it must be in the neighbourhood. + +Already am I less alone; unconscious companions and brethren rove around +me; their warm breath toucheth my soul." + +When, however, he spied about and sought for the comforters of his +lonesomeness, behold, there were kine there standing together on an +eminence, whose proximity and smell had warmed his heart. The kine, +however, seemed to listen eagerly to a speaker, and took no heed of him +who approached. When, however, Zarathustra was quite nigh unto them, +then did he hear plainly that a human voice spake in the midst of the +kine, and apparently all of them had turned their heads towards the +speaker. + +Then ran Zarathustra up speedily and drove the animals aside; for he +feared that some one had here met with harm, which the pity of the +kine would hardly be able to relieve. But in this he was deceived; for +behold, there sat a man on the ground who seemed to be persuading +the animals to have no fear of him, a peaceable man and +Preacher-on-the-Mount, out of whose eyes kindness itself preached. "What +dost thou seek here?" called out Zarathustra in astonishment. + +"What do I here seek?" answered he: "the same that thou seekest, thou +mischief-maker; that is to say, happiness upon earth. + +To that end, however, I would fain learn of these kine. For I tell thee +that I have already talked half a morning unto them, and just now were +they about to give me their answer. Why dost thou disturb them? + +Except we be converted and become as kine, we shall in no wise enter +into the kingdom of heaven. For we ought to learn from them one thing: +ruminating. + +And verily, although a man should gain the whole world, and yet not +learn one thing, ruminating, what would it profit him! He would not be +rid of his affliction, + +--His great affliction: that, however, is at present called DISGUST. Who +hath not at present his heart, his mouth and his eyes full of disgust? +Thou also! Thou also! But behold these kine!"-- + +Thus spake the Preacher-on-the-Mount, and turned then his own look +towards Zarathustra--for hitherto it had rested lovingly on the kine--: +then, however, he put on a different expression. "Who is this with whom +I talk?" he exclaimed frightened, and sprang up from the ground. + +"This is the man without disgust, this is Zarathustra himself, the +surmounter of the great disgust, this is the eye, this is the mouth, +this is the heart of Zarathustra himself." + +And whilst he thus spake he kissed with o'erflowing eyes the hands +of him with whom he spake, and behaved altogether like one to whom a +precious gift and jewel hath fallen unawares from heaven. The kine, +however, gazed at it all and wondered. + +"Speak not of me, thou strange one; thou amiable one!" said Zarathustra, +and restrained his affection, "speak to me firstly of thyself! Art thou +not the voluntary beggar who once cast away great riches,-- + +--Who was ashamed of his riches and of the rich, and fled to the poorest +to bestow upon them his abundance and his heart? But they received him +not." + +"But they received me not," said the voluntary beggar, "thou knowest it, +forsooth. So I went at last to the animals and to those kine." + +"Then learnedst thou," interrupted Zarathustra, "how much harder it is +to give properly than to take properly, and that bestowing well is an +ART--the last, subtlest master-art of kindness." + +"Especially nowadays," answered the voluntary beggar: "at present, that +is to say, when everything low hath become rebellious and exclusive and +haughty in its manner--in the manner of the populace. + +For the hour hath come, thou knowest it forsooth, for the great, evil, +long, slow mob-and-slave-insurrection: it extendeth and extendeth! + +Now doth it provoke the lower classes, all benevolence and petty giving; +and the overrich may be on their guard! + +Whoever at present drip, like bulgy bottles out of all-too-small +necks:--of such bottles at present one willingly breaketh the necks. + +Wanton avidity, bilious envy, careworn revenge, populace-pride: all +these struck mine eye. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. +The kingdom of heaven, however, is with the kine." + +"And why is it not with the rich?" asked Zarathustra temptingly, while +he kept back the kine which sniffed familiarly at the peaceful one. + +"Why dost thou tempt me?" answered the other. "Thou knowest it thyself +better even than I. What was it drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra? +Was it not my disgust at the richest? + +--At the culprits of riches, with cold eyes and rank thoughts, who pick +up profit out of all kinds of rubbish--at this rabble that stinketh to +heaven, + +--At this gilded, falsified populace, whose fathers were pickpockets, +or carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives compliant, lewd and +forgetful:--for they are all of them not far different from harlots-- + +Populace above, populace below! What are 'poor' and 'rich' at present! +That distinction did I unlearn,--then did I flee away further and ever +further, until I came to those kine." + +Thus spake the peaceful one, and puffed himself and perspired with +his words: so that the kine wondered anew. Zarathustra, however, kept +looking into his face with a smile, all the time the man talked so +severely--and shook silently his head. + +"Thou doest violence to thyself, thou Preacher-on-the-Mount, when thou +usest such severe words. For such severity neither thy mouth nor thine +eye have been given thee. + +Nor, methinketh, hath thy stomach either: unto IT all such rage and +hatred and foaming-over is repugnant. Thy stomach wanteth softer things: +thou art not a butcher. + +Rather seemest thou to me a plant-eater and a root-man. Perhaps thou +grindest corn. Certainly, however, thou art averse to fleshly joys, and +thou lovest honey." + +"Thou hast divined me well," answered the voluntary beggar, with +lightened heart. "I love honey, I also grind corn; for I have sought out +what tasteth sweetly and maketh pure breath: + +--Also what requireth a long time, a day's-work and a mouth's-work for +gentle idlers and sluggards. + +Furthest, to be sure, have those kine carried it: they have devised +ruminating and lying in the sun. They also abstain from all heavy +thoughts which inflate the heart." + +--"Well!" said Zarathustra, "thou shouldst also see MINE animals, mine +eagle and my serpent,--their like do not at present exist on earth. + +Behold, thither leadeth the way to my cave: be to-night its guest. And +talk to mine animals of the happiness of animals,-- + +--Until I myself come home. For now a cry of distress calleth me hastily +away from thee. Also, shouldst thou find new honey with me, ice-cold, +golden-comb-honey, eat it! + +Now, however, take leave at once of thy kine, thou strange one! thou +amiable one! though it be hard for thee. For they are thy warmest +friends and preceptors!"-- + +--"One excepted, whom I hold still dearer," answered the voluntary +beggar. "Thou thyself art good, O Zarathustra, and better even than a +cow!" + +"Away, away with thee! thou evil flatterer!" cried Zarathustra +mischievously, "why dost thou spoil me with such praise and +flattery-honey? + +"Away, away from me!" cried he once more, and heaved his stick at the +fond beggar, who, however, ran nimbly away. + + + + +LXIX. THE SHADOW. + +Scarcely however was the voluntary beggar gone in haste, and Zarathustra +again alone, when he heard behind him a new voice which called out: +"Stay! Zarathustra! Do wait! It is myself, forsooth, O Zarathustra, +myself, thy shadow!" But Zarathustra did not wait; for a sudden +irritation came over him on account of the crowd and the crowding in his +mountains. "Whither hath my lonesomeness gone?" spake he. + +"It is verily becoming too much for me; these mountains swarm; my +kingdom is no longer of THIS world; I require new mountains. + +My shadow calleth me? What matter about my shadow! Let it run after me! +I--run away from it." + +Thus spake Zarathustra to his heart and ran away. But the one behind +followed after him, so that immediately there were three runners, +one after the other--namely, foremost the voluntary beggar, then +Zarathustra, and thirdly, and hindmost, his shadow. But not long had +they run thus when Zarathustra became conscious of his folly, and shook +off with one jerk all his irritation and detestation. + +"What!" said he, "have not the most ludicrous things always happened to +us old anchorites and saints? + +Verily, my folly hath grown big in the mountains! Now do I hear six old +fools' legs rattling behind one another! + +But doth Zarathustra need to be frightened by his shadow? Also, +methinketh that after all it hath longer legs than mine." + +Thus spake Zarathustra, and, laughing with eyes and entrails, he stood +still and turned round quickly--and behold, he almost thereby threw his +shadow and follower to the ground, so closely had the latter followed at +his heels, and so weak was he. For when Zarathustra scrutinised him +with his glance he was frightened as by a sudden apparition, so slender, +swarthy, hollow and worn-out did this follower appear. + +"Who art thou?" asked Zarathustra vehemently, "what doest thou here? And +why callest thou thyself my shadow? Thou art not pleasing unto me." + +"Forgive me," answered the shadow, "that it is I; and if I please thee +not--well, O Zarathustra! therein do I admire thee and thy good taste. + +A wanderer am I, who have walked long at thy heels; always on the way, +but without a goal, also without a home: so that verily, I lack little +of being the eternally Wandering Jew, except that I am not eternal and +not a Jew. + +What? Must I ever be on the way? Whirled by every wind, unsettled, +driven about? O earth, thou hast become too round for me! + +On every surface have I already sat, like tired dust have I fallen +asleep on mirrors and window-panes: everything taketh from me, nothing +giveth; I become thin--I am almost equal to a shadow. + +After thee, however, O Zarathustra, did I fly and hie longest; and +though I hid myself from thee, I was nevertheless thy best shadow: +wherever thou hast sat, there sat I also. + +With thee have I wandered about in the remotest, coldest worlds, like a +phantom that voluntarily haunteth winter roofs and snows. + +With thee have I pushed into all the forbidden, all the worst and the +furthest: and if there be anything of virtue in me, it is that I have +had no fear of any prohibition. + +With thee have I broken up whatever my heart revered; all +boundary-stones and statues have I o'erthrown; the most dangerous wishes +did I pursue,--verily, beyond every crime did I once go. + +With thee did I unlearn the belief in words and worths and in great +names. When the devil casteth his skin, doth not his name also fall +away? It is also skin. The devil himself is perhaps--skin. + +'Nothing is true, all is permitted': so said I to myself. Into the +coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand +there naked on that account, like a red crab! + +Ah, where have gone all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief +in the good! Ah, where is the lying innocence which I once possessed, +the innocence of the good and of their noble lies! + +Too oft, verily, did I follow close to the heels of truth: then did it +kick me on the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and behold! then only did +I hit--the truth. + +Too much hath become clear unto me: now it doth not concern me any more. +Nothing liveth any longer that I love,--how should I still love myself? + +'To live as I incline, or not to live at all': so do I wish; so wisheth +also the holiest. But alas! how have _I_ still--inclination? + +Have _I_--still a goal? A haven towards which MY sail is set? + +A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what +wind is good, and a fair wind for him. + +What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; an unstable +will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone. + +This seeking for MY home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this +seeking hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up. + +'WHERE is--MY home?' For it do I ask and seek, and have sought, but +have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O +eternal--in-vain!" + +Thus spake the shadow, and Zarathustra's countenance lengthened at his +words. "Thou art my shadow!" said he at last sadly. + +"Thy danger is not small, thou free spirit and wanderer! Thou hast had a +bad day: see that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee! + +To such unsettled ones as thou, seemeth at last even a prisoner blessed. +Didst thou ever see how captured criminals sleep? They sleep quietly, +they enjoy their new security. + +Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee, a hard, rigorous +delusion! For now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and +tempteth thee. + +Thou hast lost thy goal. Alas, how wilt thou forego and forget that +loss? Thereby--hast thou also lost thy way! + +Thou poor rover and rambler, thou tired butterfly! wilt thou have a rest +and a home this evening? Then go up to my cave! + +Thither leadeth the way to my cave. And now will I run quickly away from +thee again. Already lieth as it were a shadow upon me. + +I will run alone, so that it may again become bright around me. +Therefore must I still be a long time merrily upon my legs. In the +evening, however, there will be--dancing with me!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LXX. NOONTIDE. + +--And Zarathustra ran and ran, but he found no one else, and was alone +and ever found himself again; he enjoyed and quaffed his solitude, and +thought of good things--for hours. About the hour of noontide, however, +when the sun stood exactly over Zarathustra's head, he passed an old, +bent and gnarled tree, which was encircled round by the ardent love of +a vine, and hidden from itself; from this there hung yellow grapes in +abundance, confronting the wanderer. Then he felt inclined to quench a +little thirst, and to break off for himself a cluster of grapes. When, +however, he had already his arm out-stretched for that purpose, he felt +still more inclined for something else--namely, to lie down beside the +tree at the hour of perfect noontide and sleep. + +This Zarathustra did; and no sooner had he laid himself on the ground in +the stillness and secrecy of the variegated grass, than he had forgotten +his little thirst, and fell asleep. For as the proverb of Zarathustra +saith: "One thing is more necessary than the other." Only that his eyes +remained open:--for they never grew weary of viewing and admiring the +tree and the love of the vine. In falling asleep, however, Zarathustra +spake thus to his heart: + +"Hush! Hush! Hath not the world now become perfect? What hath happened +unto me? + +As a delicate wind danceth invisibly upon parqueted seas, light, +feather-light, so--danceth sleep upon me. + +No eye doth it close to me, it leaveth my soul awake. Light is it, +verily, feather-light. + +It persuadeth me, I know not how, it toucheth me inwardly with a +caressing hand, it constraineth me. Yea, it constraineth me, so that my +soul stretcheth itself out:-- + +--How long and weary it becometh, my strange soul! Hath a seventh-day +evening come to it precisely at noontide? Hath it already wandered too +long, blissfully, among good and ripe things? + +It stretcheth itself out, long--longer! it lieth still, my strange +soul. Too many good things hath it already tasted; this golden sadness +oppresseth it, it distorteth its mouth. + +--As a ship that putteth into the calmest cove:--it now draweth up to +the land, weary of long voyages and uncertain seas. Is not the land more +faithful? + +As such a ship huggeth the shore, tuggeth the shore:--then it sufficeth +for a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the land. No stronger +ropes are required there. + +As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now repose, nigh +to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest +threads. + +O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest +in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd +playeth his pipe. + +Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The +world is perfect. + +Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo--hush! +The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now +drink a drop of happiness-- + +--An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh +over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus--laugheth a God. Hush!-- + +--'For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!' Thus spake I +once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: THAT have I now +learned. Wise fools speak better. + +The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a +lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance--LITTLE maketh up +the BEST happiness. Hush! + +--What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have +I not fallen--hark! into the well of eternity? + +--What happeneth to me? Hush! It stingeth me--alas--to the heart? To +the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after +such a sting! + +--What? Hath not the world just now become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh, +for the golden round ring--whither doth it fly? Let me run after it! +Quick! + +Hush--" (and here Zarathustra stretched himself, and felt that he was +asleep.) + +"Up!" said he to himself, "thou sleeper! Thou noontide sleeper! Well +then, up, ye old legs! It is time and more than time; many a good +stretch of road is still awaiting you-- + +Now have ye slept your fill; for how long a time? A half-eternity! Well +then, up now, mine old heart! For how long after such a sleep mayest +thou--remain awake?" + +(But then did he fall asleep anew, and his soul spake against him and +defended itself, and lay down again)--"Leave me alone! Hush! Hath not +the world just now become perfect? Oh, for the golden round ball!-- + +"Get up," said Zarathustra, "thou little thief, thou sluggard! What! +Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells? + +Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here he became frightened, for a +sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.) + +"O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at +me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul? + +When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly +things,--when wilt thou drink this strange soul-- + +--When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when +wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?" + +Thus spake Zarathustra, and rose from his couch beside the tree, as if +awakening from a strange drunkenness: and behold! there stood the +sun still exactly above his head. One might, however, rightly infer +therefrom that Zarathustra had not then slept long. + + + + +LXXI. THE GREETING. + +It was late in the afternoon only when Zarathustra, after long useless +searching and strolling about, again came home to his cave. When, +however, he stood over against it, not more than twenty paces therefrom, +the thing happened which he now least of all expected: he heard anew the +great CRY OF DISTRESS. And extraordinary! this time the cry came out +of his own cave. It was a long, manifold, peculiar cry, and Zarathustra +plainly distinguished that it was composed of many voices: although +heard at a distance it might sound like the cry out of a single mouth. + +Thereupon Zarathustra rushed forward to his cave, and behold! what a +spectacle awaited him after that concert! For there did they all sit +together whom he had passed during the day: the king on the right and +the king on the left, the old magician, the pope, the voluntary +beggar, the shadow, the intellectually conscientious one, the sorrowful +soothsayer, and the ass; the ugliest man, however, had set a crown on +his head, and had put round him two purple girdles,--for he liked, like +all ugly ones, to disguise himself and play the handsome person. In the +midst, however, of that sorrowful company stood Zarathustra's eagle, +ruffled and disquieted, for it had been called upon to answer too much +for which its pride had not any answer; the wise serpent however hung +round its neck. + +All this did Zarathustra behold with great astonishment; then however he +scrutinised each individual guest with courteous curiosity, read their +souls and wondered anew. In the meantime the assembled ones had risen +from their seats, and waited with reverence for Zarathustra to speak. +Zarathustra however spake thus: + +"Ye despairing ones! Ye strange ones! So it was YOUR cry of distress +that I heard? And now do I know also where he is to be sought, whom I +have sought for in vain to-day: THE HIGHER MAN--: + +--In mine own cave sitteth he, the higher man! But why do I wonder! Have +not I myself allured him to me by honey-offerings and artful lure-calls +of my happiness? + +But it seemeth to me that ye are badly adapted for company: ye make +one another's hearts fretful, ye that cry for help, when ye sit here +together? There is one that must first come, + +--One who will make you laugh once more, a good jovial buffoon, a +dancer, a wind, a wild romp, some old fool:--what think ye? + +Forgive me, however, ye despairing ones, for speaking such trivial words +before you, unworthy, verily, of such guests! But ye do not divine WHAT +maketh my heart wanton:-- + +--Ye yourselves do it, and your aspect, forgive it me! For every one +becometh courageous who beholdeth a despairing one. To encourage a +despairing one--every one thinketh himself strong enough to do so. + +To myself have ye given this power,--a good gift, mine honourable +guests! An excellent guest's-present! Well, do not then upbraid when I +also offer you something of mine. + +This is mine empire and my dominion: that which is mine, however, shall +this evening and tonight be yours. Mine animals shall serve you: let my +cave be your resting-place! + +At house and home with me shall no one despair: in my purlieus do I +protect every one from his wild beasts. And that is the first thing +which I offer you: security! + +The second thing, however, is my little finger. And when ye have THAT, +then take the whole hand also, yea, and the heart with it! Welcome here, +welcome to you, my guests!" + +Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed with love and mischief. After this +greeting his guests bowed once more and were reverentially silent; the +king on the right, however, answered him in their name. + +"O Zarathustra, by the way in which thou hast given us thy hand and thy +greeting, we recognise thee as Zarathustra. Thou hast humbled thyself +before us; almost hast thou hurt our reverence--: + +--Who however could have humbled himself as thou hast done, with such +pride? THAT uplifteth us ourselves; a refreshment is it, to our eyes and +hearts. + +To behold this, merely, gladly would we ascend higher mountains than +this. For as eager beholders have we come; we wanted to see what +brighteneth dim eyes. + +And lo! now is it all over with our cries of distress. Now are our minds +and hearts open and enraptured. Little is lacking for our spirits to +become wanton. + +There is nothing, O Zarathustra, that groweth more pleasingly on earth +than a lofty, strong will: it is the finest growth. An entire landscape +refresheth itself at one such tree. + +To the pine do I compare him, O Zarathustra, which groweth up like +thee--tall, silent, hardy, solitary, of the best, supplest wood, +stately,-- + +--In the end, however, grasping out for ITS dominion with strong, green +branches, asking weighty questions of the wind, the storm, and whatever +is at home on high places; + +--Answering more weightily, a commander, a victor! Oh! who should not +ascend high mountains to behold such growths? + +At thy tree, O Zarathustra, the gloomy and ill-constituted also refresh +themselves; at thy look even the wavering become steady and heal their +hearts. + +And verily, towards thy mountain and thy tree do many eyes turn to-day; +a great longing hath arisen, and many have learned to ask: 'Who is +Zarathustra?' + +And those into whose ears thou hast at any time dripped thy song and thy +honey: all the hidden ones, the lone-dwellers and the twain-dwellers, +have simultaneously said to their hearts: + +'Doth Zarathustra still live? It is no longer worth while to live, +everything is indifferent, everything is useless: or else--we must live +with Zarathustra!' + +'Why doth he not come who hath so long announced himself?' thus do many +people ask; 'hath solitude swallowed him up? Or should we perhaps go to +him?' + +Now doth it come to pass that solitude itself becometh fragile and +breaketh open, like a grave that breaketh open and can no longer hold +its dead. Everywhere one seeth resurrected ones. + +Now do the waves rise and rise around thy mountain, O Zarathustra. And +however high be thy height, many of them must rise up to thee: thy boat +shall not rest much longer on dry ground. + +And that we despairing ones have now come into thy cave, and already no +longer despair:--it is but a prognostic and a presage that better ones +are on the way to thee,-- + +--For they themselves are on the way to thee, the last remnant of +God among men--that is to say, all the men of great longing, of great +loathing, of great satiety, + +--All who do not want to live unless they learn again to HOPE--unless +they learn from thee, O Zarathustra, the GREAT hope!" + +Thus spake the king on the right, and seized the hand of Zarathustra in +order to kiss it; but Zarathustra checked his veneration, and stepped +back frightened, fleeing as it were, silently and suddenly into the far +distance. After a little while, however, he was again at home with his +guests, looked at them with clear scrutinising eyes, and said: + +"My guests, ye higher men, I will speak plain language and plainly with +you. It is not for YOU that I have waited here in these mountains." + +("'Plain language and plainly?' Good God!" said here the king on the +left to himself; "one seeth he doth not know the good Occidentals, this +sage out of the Orient! + +But he meaneth 'blunt language and bluntly'--well! That is not the worst +taste in these days!") + +"Ye may, verily, all of you be higher men," continued Zarathustra; "but +for me--ye are neither high enough, nor strong enough. + +For me, that is to say, for the inexorable which is now silent in me, +but will not always be silent. And if ye appertain to me, still it is +not as my right arm. + +For he who himself standeth, like you, on sickly and tender legs, +wisheth above all to be TREATED INDULGENTLY, whether he be conscious of +it or hide it from himself. + +My arms and my legs, however, I do not treat indulgently, I DO NOT TREAT +MY WARRIORS INDULGENTLY: how then could ye be fit for MY warfare? + +With you I should spoil all my victories. And many of you would tumble +over if ye but heard the loud beating of my drums. + +Moreover, ye are not sufficiently beautiful and well-born for me. I +require pure, smooth mirrors for my doctrines; on your surface even mine +own likeness is distorted. + +On your shoulders presseth many a burden, many a recollection; many a +mischievous dwarf squatteth in your corners. There is concealed populace +also in you. + +And though ye be high and of a higher type, much in you is crooked and +misshapen. There is no smith in the world that could hammer you right +and straight for me. + +Ye are only bridges: may higher ones pass over upon you! Ye signify +steps: so do not upbraid him who ascendeth beyond you into HIS height! + +Out of your seed there may one day arise for me a genuine son and +perfect heir: but that time is distant. Ye yourselves are not those unto +whom my heritage and name belong. + +Not for you do I wait here in these mountains; not with you may I +descend for the last time. Ye have come unto me only as a presage that +higher ones are on the way to me,-- + +--NOT the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety, and +that which ye call the remnant of God; + +--Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! For OTHERS do I wait here in these +mountains, and will not lift my foot from thence without them; + +--For higher ones, stronger ones, triumphanter ones, merrier ones, for +such as are built squarely in body and soul: LAUGHING LIONS must come! + +O my guests, ye strange ones--have ye yet heard nothing of my children? +And that they are on the way to me? + +Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my new beautiful +race--why do ye not speak unto me thereof? + +This guests'-present do I solicit of your love, that ye speak unto me of +my children. For them am I rich, for them I became poor: what have I not +surrendered, + +--What would I not surrender that I might have one thing: THESE +children, THIS living plantation, THESE life-trees of my will and of my +highest hope!" + +Thus spake Zarathustra, and stopped suddenly in his discourse: for his +longing came over him, and he closed his eyes and his mouth, because +of the agitation of his heart. And all his guests also were silent, and +stood still and confounded: except only that the old soothsayer made +signs with his hands and his gestures. + + + + +LXXII. THE SUPPER. + +For at this point the soothsayer interrupted the greeting of Zarathustra +and his guests: he pressed forward as one who had no time to lose, +seized Zarathustra's hand and exclaimed: "But Zarathustra! + +One thing is more necessary than the other, so sayest thou thyself: +well, one thing is now more necessary UNTO ME than all others. + +A word at the right time: didst thou not invite me to TABLE? And here +are many who have made long journeys. Thou dost not mean to feed us +merely with discourses? + +Besides, all of you have thought too much about freezing, drowning, +suffocating, and other bodily dangers: none of you, however, have +thought of MY danger, namely, perishing of hunger-" + +(Thus spake the soothsayer. When Zarathustra's animals, however, heard +these words, they ran away in terror. For they saw that all they +had brought home during the day would not be enough to fill the one +soothsayer.) + +"Likewise perishing of thirst," continued the soothsayer. "And although +I hear water splashing here like words of wisdom--that is to say, +plenteously and unweariedly, I--want WINE! + +Not every one is a born water-drinker like Zarathustra. Neither doth +water suit weary and withered ones: WE deserve wine--IT alone giveth +immediate vigour and improvised health!" + +On this occasion, when the soothsayer was longing for wine, it happened +that the king on the left, the silent one, also found expression for +once. "WE took care," said he, "about wine, I, along with my brother the +king on the right: we have enough of wine,--a whole ass-load of it. So +there is nothing lacking but bread." + +"Bread," replied Zarathustra, laughing when he spake, "it is precisely +bread that anchorites have not. But man doth not live by bread alone, +but also by the flesh of good lambs, of which I have two: + +--THESE shall we slaughter quickly, and cook spicily with sage: it is +so that I like them. And there is also no lack of roots and fruits, +good enough even for the fastidious and dainty,--nor of nuts and other +riddles for cracking. + +Thus will we have a good repast in a little while. But whoever wish to +eat with us must also give a hand to the work, even the kings. For with +Zarathustra even a king may be a cook." + +This proposal appealed to the hearts of all of them, save that the +voluntary beggar objected to the flesh and wine and spices. + +"Just hear this glutton Zarathustra!" said he jokingly: "doth one go +into caves and high mountains to make such repasts? + +Now indeed do I understand what he once taught us: Blessed be moderate +poverty!' And why he wisheth to do away with beggars." + +"Be of good cheer," replied Zarathustra, "as I am. Abide by thy +customs, thou excellent one: grind thy corn, drink thy water, praise thy +cooking,--if only it make thee glad! + +I am a law only for mine own; I am not a law for all. He, however, who +belongeth unto me must be strong of bone and light of foot,-- + +--Joyous in fight and feast, no sulker, no John o' Dreams, ready for the +hardest task as for the feast, healthy and hale. + +The best belongeth unto mine and me; and if it be not given us, then do +we take it:--the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts, the +fairest women!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra; the king on the right however answered and said: +"Strange! Did one ever hear such sensible things out of the mouth of a +wise man? + +And verily, it is the strangest thing in a wise man, if over and above, +he be still sensible, and not an ass." + +Thus spake the king on the right and wondered; the ass however, with +ill-will, said YE-A to his remark. This however was the beginning of +that long repast which is called "The Supper" in the history-books. At +this there was nothing else spoken of but THE HIGHER MAN. + + + + +LXXIII. THE HIGHER MAN. + +1. + +When I came unto men for the first time, then did I commit the anchorite +folly, the great folly: I appeared on the market-place. + +And when I spake unto all, I spake unto none. In the evening, however, +rope-dancers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself almost a +corpse. + +With the new morning, however, there came unto me a new truth: then did +I learn to say: "Of what account to me are market-place and populace and +populace-noise and long populace-ears!" + +Ye higher men, learn THIS from me: On the market-place no one believeth +in higher men. But if ye will speak there, very well! The populace, +however, blinketh: "We are all equal." + +"Ye higher men,"--so blinketh the populace--"there are no higher men, we +are all equal; man is man, before God--we are all equal!" + +Before God!--Now, however, this God hath died. Before the populace, +however, we will not be equal. Ye higher men, away from the +market-place! + +2. + +Before God!--Now however this God hath died! Ye higher men, this God was +your greatest danger. + +Only since he lay in the grave have ye again arisen. Now only cometh the +great noontide, now only doth the higher man become--master! + +Have ye understood this word, O my brethren? Ye are frightened: do your +hearts turn giddy? Doth the abyss here yawn for you? Doth the hell-hound +here yelp at you? + +Well! Take heart! ye higher men! Now only travaileth the mountain of the +human future. God hath died: now do WE desire--the Superman to live. + +3. + +The most careful ask to-day: "How is man to be maintained?" Zarathustra +however asketh, as the first and only one: "How is man to be SURPASSED?" + +The Superman, I have at heart; THAT is the first and only thing to +me--and NOT man: not the neighbour, not the poorest, not the sorriest, +not the best.-- + +O my brethren, what I can love in man is that he is an over-going and a +down-going. And also in you there is much that maketh me love and hope. + +In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope. For the +great despisers are the great reverers. + +In that ye have despaired, there is much to honour. For ye have not +learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy. + +For to-day have the petty people become master: they all preach +submission and humility and policy and diligence and consideration and +the long et cetera of petty virtues. + +Whatever is of the effeminate type, whatever originateth from the +servile type, and especially the populace-mishmash:--THAT wisheth now to +be master of all human destiny--O disgust! Disgust! Disgust! + +THAT asketh and asketh and never tireth: "How is man to maintain himself +best, longest, most pleasantly?" Thereby--are they the masters of +to-day. + +These masters of to-day--surpass them, O my brethren--these petty +people: THEY are the Superman's greatest danger! + +Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the petty policy, the +sand-grain considerateness, the ant-hill trumpery, the pitiable +comfortableness, the "happiness of the greatest number"--! + +And rather despair than submit yourselves. And verily, I love you, +because ye know not to-day how to live, ye higher men! For thus do YE +live--best! + +4. + +Have ye courage, O my brethren? Are ye stout-hearted? NOT the courage +before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God +any longer beholdeth? + +Cold souls, mules, the blind and the drunken, I do not call +stout-hearted. He hath heart who knoweth fear, but VANQUISHETH it; who +seeth the abyss, but with PRIDE. + +He who seeth the abyss, but with eagle's eyes,--he who with eagle's +talons GRASPETH the abyss: he hath courage.-- + +5. + +"Man is evil"--so said to me for consolation, all the wisest ones. Ah, +if only it be still true to-day! For the evil is man's best force. + +"Man must become better and eviler"--so do _I_ teach. The evilest is +necessary for the Superman's best. + +It may have been well for the preacher of the petty people to suffer and +be burdened by men's sin. I, however, rejoice in great sin as my great +CONSOLATION.-- + +Such things, however, are not said for long ears. Every word, also, +is not suited for every mouth. These are fine far-away things: at them +sheep's claws shall not grasp! + +6. + +Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put +wrong? + +Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you sufferers? +Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones, new and easier +footpaths? + +Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! Always more, always better ones of your +type shall succumb,--for ye shall always have it worse and harder. Thus +only-- + +--Thus only groweth man aloft to the height where the lightning striketh +and shattereth him: high enough for the lightning! + +Towards the few, the long, the remote go forth my soul and my seeking: +of what account to me are your many little, short miseries! + +Ye do not yet suffer enough for me! For ye suffer from yourselves, ye +have not yet suffered FROM MAN. Ye would lie if ye spake otherwise! None +of you suffereth from what _I_ have suffered.-- + +7. + +It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer doeth harm. I do +not wish to conduct it away: it shall learn--to work for ME.-- + +My wisdom hath accumulated long like a cloud, it becometh stiller and +darker. So doeth all wisdom which shall one day bear LIGHTNINGS.-- + +Unto these men of to-day will I not be LIGHT, nor be called light. +THEM--will I blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes! + +8. + +Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad falseness in +those who will beyond their power. + +Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in +great things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-players:-- + +--Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-eyed, whited +cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade virtues and brilliant +false deeds. + +Take good care there, ye higher men! For nothing is more precious to me, +and rarer, than honesty. + +Is this to-day not that of the populace? The populace however knoweth +not what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is +honest: it is innocently crooked, it ever lieth. + +9. + +Have a good distrust to-day ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones! Ye +open-hearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this to-day is that +of the populace. + +What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could-- +refute it to them by means of reasons? + +And on the market-place one convinceth with gestures. But reasons make +the populace distrustful. + +And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good +distrust: "What strong error hath fought for it?" + +Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you, because they +are unproductive! They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird +is unplumed. + +Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far +from being love to truth. Be on your guard! + +Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! Refrigerated +spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth +is. + +10. + +If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves +CARRIED aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads! + +Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback? Thou now ridest briskly up +to thy goal? Well, my friend! But thy lame foot is also with thee on +horseback! + +When thou reachest thy goal, when thou alightest from thy horse: +precisely on thy HEIGHT, thou higher man,--then wilt thou stumble! + +11. + +Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one's own +child. + +Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOUR +neighbour? Even if ye act "for your neighbour"--ye still do not create +for him! + +Unlearn, I pray you, this "for," ye creating ones: your very virtue +wisheth you to have naught to do with "for" and "on account of" and +"because." Against these false little words shall ye stop your ears. + +"For one's neighbour," is the virtue only of the petty people: there it +is said "like and like," and "hand washeth hand":--they have neither the +right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking! + +In your self-seeking, ye creating ones, there is the foresight and +foreseeing of the pregnant! What no one's eye hath yet seen, namely, the +fruit--this, sheltereth and saveth and nourisheth your entire love. + +Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your +entire virtue! Your work, your will is YOUR "neighbour": let no false +values impose upon you! + +12. + +Ye creating ones, ye higher men! Whoever hath to give birth is sick; +whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean. + +Ask women: one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleasure. The pain +maketh hens and poets cackle. + +Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because ye +have had to be mothers. + +A new child: oh, how much new filth hath also come into the world! Go +apart! He who hath given birth shall wash his soul! + +13. + +Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves +opposed to probability! + +Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers' virtue hath already walked! +How would ye rise high, if your fathers' will should not rise with you? + +He, however, who would be a firstling, let him take care lest he also +become a lastling! And where the vices of your fathers are, there should +ye not set up as saints! + +He whose fathers were inclined for women, and for strong wine and flesh +of wildboar swine; what would it be if he demanded chastity of himself? + +A folly would it be! Much, verily, doth it seem to me for such a one, if +he should be the husband of one or of two or of three women. + +And if he founded monasteries, and inscribed over their portals: "The +way to holiness,"--I should still say: What good is it! it is a new +folly! + +He hath founded for himself a penance-house and refuge-house: much good +may it do! But I do not believe in it. + +In solitude there groweth what any one bringeth into it--also the brute +in one's nature. Thus is solitude inadvisable unto many. + +Hath there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of +the wilderness? AROUND THEM was not only the devil loose--but also the +swine. + +14. + +Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath failed--thus, ye +higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A CAST which ye made had +failed. + +But what doth it matter, ye dice-players! Ye had not learned to play and +mock, as one must play and mock! Do we not ever sit at a great table of +mocking and playing? + +And if great things have been a failure with you, have ye yourselves +therefore--been a failure? And if ye yourselves have been a failure, +hath man therefore--been a failure? If man, however, hath been a +failure: well then! never mind! + +15. + +The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher +men here, have ye not all--been failures? + +Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn +to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! + +What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye +half-shattered ones! Doth not--man's FUTURE strive and struggle in you? + +Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious +powers--do not all these foam through one another in your vessel? + +What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh at yourselves, +as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, O, how much is still possible! + +And verily, how much hath already succeeded! How rich is this earth in +small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things! + +Set around you small, good, perfect things, ye higher men. Their golden +maturity healeth the heart. The perfect teacheth one to hope. + +16. + +What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the +word of him who said: "Woe unto them that laugh now!" + +Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought +badly. A child even findeth cause for it. + +He--did not love sufficiently: otherwise would he also have loved +us, the laughing ones! But he hated and hooted us; wailing and +teeth-gnashing did he promise us. + +Must one then curse immediately, when one doth not love? That--seemeth +to me bad taste. Thus did he, however, this absolute one. He sprang from +the populace. + +And he himself just did not love sufficiently; otherwise would he have +raged less because people did not love him. All great love doth not SEEK +love:--it seeketh more. + +Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They are a poor sickly +type, a populace-type: they look at this life with ill-will, they have +an evil eye for this earth. + +Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They have heavy feet and +sultry hearts:--they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be +light to such ones! + +17. + +Tortuously do all good things come nigh to their goal. Like cats +they curve their backs, they purr inwardly with their approaching +happiness,--all good things laugh. + +His step betrayeth whether a person already walketh on HIS OWN path: +just see me walk! He, however, who cometh nigh to his goal, danceth. + +And verily, a statue have I not become, not yet do I stand there stiff, +stupid and stony, like a pillar; I love fast racing. + +And though there be on earth fens and dense afflictions, he who hath +light feet runneth even across the mud, and danceth, as upon well-swept +ice. + +Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your +legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still, if ye +stand upon your heads! + +18. + +This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: I myself have put +on this crown, I myself have consecrated my laughter. No one else have I +found to-day potent enough for this. + +Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckoneth with +his pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto all birds, ready and +prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one:-- + +Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient +one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps; I myself have +put on this crown! + +19. + +Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your +legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still if ye +stand upon your heads! + +There are also heavy animals in a state of happiness, there are +club-footed ones from the beginning. Curiously do they exert themselves, +like an elephant which endeavoureth to stand upon its head. + +Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish with +misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely. So learn, I +pray you, my wisdom, ye higher men: even the worst thing hath two good +reverse sides,-- + +--Even the worst thing hath good dancing-legs: so learn, I pray you, ye +higher men, to put yourselves on your proper legs! + +So unlearn, I pray you, the sorrow-sighing, and all the +populace-sadness! Oh, how sad the buffoons of the populace seem to me +to-day! This to-day, however, is that of the populace. + +20. + +Do like unto the wind when it rusheth forth from its mountain-caves: +unto its own piping will it dance; the seas tremble and leap under its +footsteps. + +That which giveth wings to asses, that which milketh the lionesses:-- +praised be that good, unruly spirit, which cometh like a hurricane unto +all the present and unto all the populace,-- + +--Which is hostile to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to all +withered leaves and weeds:--praised be this wild, good, free spirit of +the storm, which danceth upon fens and afflictions, as upon meadows! + +Which hateth the consumptive populace-dogs, and all the ill-constituted, +sullen brood:--praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing +storm, which bloweth dust into the eyes of all the melanopic and +melancholic! + +Ye higher men, the worst thing in you is that ye have none of you +learned to dance as ye ought to dance--to dance beyond yourselves! What +doth it matter that ye have failed! + +How many things are still possible! So LEARN to laugh beyond yourselves! +Lift up your hearts, ye good dancers, high! higher! And do not forget +the good laughter! + +This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: to you my brethren +do I cast this crown! Laughing have I consecrated; ye higher men, LEARN, +I pray you--to laugh! + + + + +LXXIV. THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY. + +1. + +When Zarathustra spake these sayings, he stood nigh to the entrance of +his cave; with the last words, however, he slipped away from his guests, +and fled for a little while into the open air. + +"O pure odours around me," cried he, "O blessed stillness around me! But +where are mine animals? Hither, hither, mine eagle and my serpent! + +Tell me, mine animals: these higher men, all of them--do they perhaps +not SMELL well? O pure odours around me! Now only do I know and feel how +I love you, mine animals." + +--And Zarathustra said once more: "I love you, mine animals!" The eagle, +however, and the serpent pressed close to him when he spake these +words, and looked up to him. In this attitude were they all three silent +together, and sniffed and sipped the good air with one another. For the +air here outside was better than with the higher men. + +2. + +Hardly, however, had Zarathustra left the cave when the old magician got +up, looked cunningly about him, and said: "He is gone! + +And already, ye higher men--let me tickle you with this complimentary +and flattering name, as he himself doeth--already doth mine evil spirit +of deceit and magic attack me, my melancholy devil, + +--Which is an adversary to this Zarathustra from the very heart: forgive +it for this! Now doth it wish to conjure before you, it hath just ITS +hour; in vain do I struggle with this evil spirit. + +Unto all of you, whatever honours ye like to assume in your names, +whether ye call yourselves 'the free spirits' or 'the conscientious,' +or 'the penitents of the spirit,' or 'the unfettered,' or 'the great +longers,'-- + +--Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to +whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and +swaddling clothes--unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil +favourable. + +I know you, ye higher men, I know him,--I know also this fiend whom I +love in spite of me, this Zarathustra: he himself often seemeth to me +like the beautiful mask of a saint, + +--Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit, the melancholy +devil, delighteth:--I love Zarathustra, so doth it often seem to me, for +the sake of mine evil spirit.-- + +But already doth IT attack me and constrain me, this spirit of +melancholy, this evening-twilight devil: and verily, ye higher men, it +hath a longing-- + +--Open your eyes!--it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or +female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open +your wits! + +The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening, also unto +the best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men, what devil--man or +woman--this spirit of evening-melancholy is!" + +Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him, and then seized +his harp. + +3. + + In evening's limpid air, + What time the dew's soothings + Unto the earth downpour, + Invisibly and unheard-- + For tender shoe-gear wear + The soothing dews, like all that's kind-gentle--: + Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart, + How once thou thirstedest + For heaven's kindly teardrops and dew's down-droppings, + All singed and weary thirstedest, + What time on yellow grass-pathways + Wicked, occidental sunny glances + Through sombre trees about thee sported, + Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting? + + "Of TRUTH the wooer? Thou?"--so taunted they-- + "Nay! Merely poet! + A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling, + That aye must lie, + That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie: + For booty lusting, + Motley masked, + Self-hidden, shrouded, + Himself his booty-- + HE--of truth the wooer? + Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet! + Just motley speaking, + From mask of fool confusedly shouting, + Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges, + On motley rainbow-arches, + 'Twixt the spurious heavenly, + And spurious earthly, + Round us roving, round us soaring,-- + MERE FOOL! MERE POET! + + HE--of truth the wooer? + Not still, stiff, smooth and cold, + Become an image, + A godlike statue, + Set up in front of temples, + As a God's own door-guard: + Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues, + In every desert homelier than at temples, + With cattish wantonness, + Through every window leaping + Quickly into chances, + Every wild forest a-sniffing, + Greedily-longingly, sniffing, + That thou, in wild forests, + 'Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures, + Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured, + With longing lips smacking, + Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty, + Robbing, skulking, lying--roving:-- + + Or unto eagles like which fixedly, + Long adown the precipice look, + Adown THEIR precipice:-- + Oh, how they whirl down now, + Thereunder, therein, + To ever deeper profoundness whirling!-- + Then, + Sudden, + With aim aright, + With quivering flight, + On LAMBKINS pouncing, + Headlong down, sore-hungry, + For lambkins longing, + Fierce 'gainst all lamb-spirits, + Furious-fierce all that look + Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly, + --Grey, with lambsheep kindliness! + + Even thus, + Eaglelike, pantherlike, + Are the poet's desires, + Are THINE OWN desires 'neath a thousand guises, + Thou fool! Thou poet! + Thou who all mankind viewedst-- + So God, as sheep--: + The God TO REND within mankind, + As the sheep in mankind, + And in rending LAUGHING-- + + THAT, THAT is thine own blessedness! + Of a panther and eagle--blessedness! + Of a poet and fool--the blessedness!-- + + In evening's limpid air, + What time the moon's sickle, + Green, 'twixt the purple-glowings, + And jealous, steal'th forth: + --Of day the foe, + With every step in secret, + The rosy garland-hammocks + Downsickling, till they've sunken + Down nightwards, faded, downsunken:-- + + Thus had I sunken one day + From mine own truth-insanity, + From mine own fervid day-longings, + Of day aweary, sick of sunshine, + --Sunk downwards, evenwards, shadowwards: + By one sole trueness + All scorched and thirsty: + --Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart, + How then thou thirstedest?-- + THAT I SHOULD BANNED BE + FROM ALL THE TRUENESS! + MERE FOOL! MERE POET! + + + + +LXXV. SCIENCE. + +Thus sang the magician; and all who were present went like birds +unawares into the net of his artful and melancholy voluptuousness. +Only the spiritually conscientious one had not been caught: he at once +snatched the harp from the magician and called out: "Air! Let in good +air! Let in Zarathustra! Thou makest this cave sultry and poisonous, +thou bad old magician! + +Thou seducest, thou false one, thou subtle one, to unknown desires and +deserts. And alas, that such as thou should talk and make ado about the +TRUTH! + +Alas, to all free spirits who are not on their guard against SUCH +magicians! It is all over with their freedom: thou teachest and temptest +back into prisons,-- + +--Thou old melancholy devil, out of thy lament soundeth a lurement: thou +resemblest those who with their praise of chastity secretly invite to +voluptuousness!" + +Thus spake the conscientious one; the old magician, however, looked +about him, enjoying his triumph, and on that account put up with the +annoyance which the conscientious one caused him. "Be still!" said he +with modest voice, "good songs want to re-echo well; after good songs +one should be long silent. + +Thus do all those present, the higher men. Thou, however, hast perhaps +understood but little of my song? In thee there is little of the magic +spirit. + +"Thou praisest me," replied the conscientious one, "in that thou +separatest me from thyself; very well! But, ye others, what do I see? Ye +still sit there, all of you, with lusting eyes--: + +Ye free spirits, whither hath your freedom gone! Ye almost seem to me +to resemble those who have long looked at bad girls dancing naked: your +souls themselves dance! + +In you, ye higher men, there must be more of that which the magician +calleth his evil spirit of magic and deceit:--we must indeed be +different. + +And verily, we spake and thought long enough together ere Zarathustra +came home to his cave, for me not to be unaware that we ARE different. + +We SEEK different things even here aloft, ye and I. For I seek more +SECURITY; on that account have I come to Zarathustra. For he is still +the most steadfast tower and will-- + +--To-day, when everything tottereth, when all the earth quaketh. Ye, +however, when I see what eyes ye make, it almost seemeth to me that ye +seek MORE INSECURITY, + +--More horror, more danger, more earthquake. Ye long (it almost seemeth +so to me--forgive my presumption, ye higher men)-- + +--Ye long for the worst and dangerousest life, which frighteneth ME +most,--for the life of wild beasts, for forests, caves, steep mountains +and labyrinthine gorges. + +And it is not those who lead OUT OF danger that please you best, but +those who lead you away from all paths, the misleaders. But if +such longing in you be ACTUAL, it seemeth to me nevertheless to be +IMPOSSIBLE. + +For fear--that is man's original and fundamental feeling; through fear +everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Through fear +there grew also MY virtue, that is to say: Science. + +For fear of wild animals--that hath been longest fostered in +man, inclusive of the animal which he concealeth and feareth in +himself:--Zarathustra calleth it 'the beast inside.' + +Such prolonged ancient fear, at last become subtle, spiritual and +intellectual--at present, me thinketh, it is called SCIENCE."-- + +Thus spake the conscientious one; but Zarathustra, who had just come +back into his cave and had heard and divined the last discourse, threw a +handful of roses to the conscientious one, and laughed on account of +his "truths." "Why!" he exclaimed, "what did I hear just now? Verily, it +seemeth to me, thou art a fool, or else I myself am one: and quietly and +quickly will I put thy 'truth' upside down. + +For FEAR--is an exception with us. Courage, however, and adventure, and +delight in the uncertain, in the unattempted--COURAGE seemeth to me the +entire primitive history of man. + +The wildest and most courageous animals hath he envied and robbed of all +their virtues: thus only did he become--man. + +THIS courage, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual, this +human courage, with eagle's pinions and serpent's wisdom: THIS, it +seemeth to me, is called at present--" + +"ZARATHUSTRA!" cried all of them there assembled, as if with one voice, +and burst out at the same time into a great laughter; there arose, +however, from them as it were a heavy cloud. Even the magician laughed, +and said wisely: "Well! It is gone, mine evil spirit! + +And did I not myself warn you against it when I said that it was a +deceiver, a lying and deceiving spirit? + +Especially when it showeth itself naked. But what can _I_ do with regard +to its tricks! Have _I_ created it and the world? + +Well! Let us be good again, and of good cheer! And although Zarathustra +looketh with evil eye--just see him! he disliketh me--: + +--Ere night cometh will he again learn to love and laud me; he cannot +live long without committing such follies. + +HE--loveth his enemies: this art knoweth he better than any one I have +seen. But he taketh revenge for it--on his friends!" + +Thus spake the old magician, and the higher men applauded him; so that +Zarathustra went round, and mischievously and lovingly shook hands with +his friends,--like one who hath to make amends and apologise to every +one for something. When however he had thereby come to the door of his +cave, lo, then had he again a longing for the good air outside, and for +his animals,--and wished to steal out. + + + + +LXXVI. AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT. + +1. + +"Go not away!" said then the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's +shadow, "abide with us--otherwise the old gloomy affliction might again +fall upon us. + +Now hath that old magician given us of his worst for our good, and +lo! the good, pious pope there hath tears in his eyes, and hath quite +embarked again upon the sea of melancholy. + +Those kings may well put on a good air before us still: for that have +THEY learned best of us all at present! Had they however no one to see +them, I wager that with them also the bad game would again commence,-- + +--The bad game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy, of curtained +heavens, of stolen suns, of howling autumn-winds, + +--The bad game of our howling and crying for help! Abide with us, O +Zarathustra! Here there is much concealed misery that wisheth to speak, +much evening, much cloud, much damp air! + +Thou hast nourished us with strong food for men, and powerful proverbs: +do not let the weakly, womanly spirits attack us anew at dessert! + +Thou alone makest the air around thee strong and clear! Did I ever find +anywhere on earth such good air as with thee in thy cave? + +Many lands have I seen, my nose hath learned to test and estimate many +kinds of air: but with thee do my nostrils taste their greatest delight! + +Unless it be,--unless it be--, do forgive an old recollection! Forgive +me an old after-dinner song, which I once composed amongst daughters of +the desert:-- + +For with them was there equally good, clear, Oriental air; there was I +furthest from cloudy, damp, melancholy Old-Europe! + +Then did I love such Oriental maidens and other blue kingdoms of heaven, +over which hang no clouds and no thoughts. + +Ye would not believe how charmingly they sat there, when they did +not dance, profound, but without thoughts, like little secrets, like +beribboned riddles, like dessert-nuts-- + +Many-hued and foreign, forsooth! but without clouds: riddles which +can be guessed: to please such maidens I then composed an after-dinner +psalm." + +Thus spake the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's shadow; and +before any one answered him, he had seized the harp of the old magician, +crossed his legs, and looked calmly and sagely around him:--with his +nostrils, however, he inhaled the air slowly and questioningly, like one +who in new countries tasteth new foreign air. Afterward he began to sing +with a kind of roaring. + +2. + +THE DESERTS GROW: WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE! + + --Ha! + Solemnly! + In effect solemnly! + A worthy beginning! + Afric manner, solemnly! + Of a lion worthy, + Or perhaps of a virtuous howl-monkey-- + --But it's naught to you, + Ye friendly damsels dearly loved, + At whose own feet to me, + The first occasion, + To a European under palm-trees, + A seat is now granted. Selah. + + Wonderful, truly! + Here do I sit now, + The desert nigh, and yet I am + So far still from the desert, + Even in naught yet deserted: + That is, I'm swallowed down + By this the smallest oasis--: + --It opened up just yawning, + Its loveliest mouth agape, + Most sweet-odoured of all mouthlets: + Then fell I right in, + Right down, right through--in 'mong you, + Ye friendly damsels dearly loved! Selah. + + Hail! hail! to that whale, fishlike, + If it thus for its guest's convenience + Made things nice!--(ye well know, + Surely, my learned allusion?) + Hail to its belly, + If it had e'er + A such loveliest oasis-belly + As this is: though however I doubt about it, + --With this come I out of Old-Europe, + That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any + Elderly married woman. + May the Lord improve it! + Amen! + + Here do I sit now, + In this the smallest oasis, + Like a date indeed, + Brown, quite sweet, gold-suppurating, + For rounded mouth of maiden longing, + But yet still more for youthful, maidlike, + Ice-cold and snow-white and incisory + Front teeth: and for such assuredly, + Pine the hearts all of ardent date-fruits. Selah. + + To the there-named south-fruits now, + Similar, all-too-similar, + Do I lie here; by little + Flying insects + Round-sniffled and round-played, + And also by yet littler, + Foolisher, and peccabler + Wishes and phantasies,-- + Environed by you, + Ye silent, presentientest + Maiden-kittens, + Dudu and Suleika, + --ROUNDSPHINXED, that into one word + I may crowd much feeling: + (Forgive me, O God, + All such speech-sinning!) + --Sit I here the best of air sniffling, + Paradisal air, truly, + Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled, + As goodly air as ever + From lunar orb downfell-- + Be it by hazard, + Or supervened it by arrogancy? + As the ancient poets relate it. + But doubter, I'm now calling it + In question: with this do I come indeed + Out of Europe, + That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any + Elderly married woman. + May the Lord improve it! + Amen. + + This the finest air drinking, + With nostrils out-swelled like goblets, + Lacking future, lacking remembrances + Thus do I sit here, ye + Friendly damsels dearly loved, + And look at the palm-tree there, + How it, to a dance-girl, like, + Doth bow and bend and on its haunches bob, + --One doth it too, when one view'th it long!-- + To a dance-girl like, who as it seem'th to me, + Too long, and dangerously persistent, + Always, always, just on SINGLE leg hath stood? + --Then forgot she thereby, as it seem'th to me, + The OTHER leg? + For vainly I, at least, + Did search for the amissing + Fellow-jewel + --Namely, the other leg-- + In the sanctified precincts, + Nigh her very dearest, very tenderest, + Flapping and fluttering and flickering skirting. + Yea, if ye should, ye beauteous friendly ones, + Quite take my word: + She hath, alas! LOST it! + Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! + It is away! + For ever away! + The other leg! + Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg! + Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping? + The lonesomest leg? + In fear perhaps before a + Furious, yellow, blond and curled + Leonine monster? Or perhaps even + Gnawed away, nibbled badly-- + Most wretched, woeful! woeful! nibbled badly! Selah. + + Oh, weep ye not, + Gentle spirits! + Weep ye not, ye + Date-fruit spirits! Milk-bosoms! + Ye sweetwood-heart + Purselets! + Weep ye no more, + Pallid Dudu! + Be a man, Suleika! Bold! Bold! + --Or else should there perhaps + Something strengthening, heart-strengthening, + Here most proper be? + Some inspiring text? + Some solemn exhortation?-- + Ha! Up now! honour! + Moral honour! European honour! + Blow again, continue, + Bellows-box of virtue! + Ha! + Once more thy roaring, + Thy moral roaring! + As a virtuous lion + Nigh the daughters of deserts roaring! + --For virtue's out-howl, + Ye very dearest maidens, + Is more than every + European fervour, European hot-hunger! + And now do I stand here, + As European, + I can't be different, God's help to me! + Amen! + +THE DESERTS GROW: WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE! + + + + +LXXVII. THE AWAKENING. + +1. + +After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave became all at once +full of noise and laughter: and since the assembled guests all spake +simultaneously, and even the ass, encouraged thereby, no longer +remained silent, a little aversion and scorn for his visitors came over +Zarathustra, although he rejoiced at their gladness. For it seemed to +him a sign of convalescence. So he slipped out into the open air and +spake to his animals. + +"Whither hath their distress now gone?" said he, and already did he +himself feel relieved of his petty disgust--"with me, it seemeth that +they have unlearned their cries of distress! + +--Though, alas! not yet their crying." And Zarathustra stopped his +ears, for just then did the YE-A of the ass mix strangely with the noisy +jubilation of those higher men. + +"They are merry," he began again, "and who knoweth? perhaps at their +host's expense; and if they have learned of me to laugh, still it is not +MY laughter they have learned. + +But what matter about that! They are old people: they recover in their +own way, they laugh in their own way; mine ears have already endured +worse and have not become peevish. + +This day is a victory: he already yieldeth, he fleeth, THE SPIRIT OF +GRAVITY, mine old arch-enemy! How well this day is about to end, which +began so badly and gloomily! + +And it is ABOUT TO end. Already cometh the evening: over the sea +rideth it hither, the good rider! How it bobbeth, the blessed one, the +home-returning one, in its purple saddles! + +The sky gazeth brightly thereon, the world lieth deep. Oh, all ye +strange ones who have come to me, it is already worth while to have +lived with me!" + +Thus spake Zarathustra. And again came the cries and laughter of the +higher men out of the cave: then began he anew: + +"They bite at it, my bait taketh, there departeth also from them their +enemy, the spirit of gravity. Now do they learn to laugh at themselves: +do I hear rightly? + +My virile food taketh effect, my strong and savoury sayings: and verily, +I did not nourish them with flatulent vegetables! But with warrior-food, +with conqueror-food: new desires did I awaken. + +New hopes are in their arms and legs, their hearts expand. They find new +words, soon will their spirits breathe wantonness. + +Such food may sure enough not be proper for children, nor even for +longing girls old and young. One persuadeth their bowels otherwise; I am +not their physician and teacher. + +The DISGUST departeth from these higher men; well! that is my victory. +In my domain they become assured; all stupid shame fleeth away; they +empty themselves. + +They empty their hearts, good times return unto them, they keep holiday +and ruminate,--they become THANKFUL. + +THAT do I take as the best sign: they become thankful. Not long will it +be ere they devise festivals, and put up memorials to their old joys. + +They are CONVALESCENTS!" Thus spake Zarathustra joyfully to his heart +and gazed outward; his animals, however, pressed up to him, and honoured +his happiness and his silence. + +2. + +All on a sudden however, Zarathustra's ear was frightened: for the cave +which had hitherto been full of noise and laughter, became all at once +still as death;--his nose, however, smelt a sweet-scented vapour and +incense-odour, as if from burning pine-cones. + +"What happeneth? What are they about?" he asked himself, and stole up +to the entrance, that he might be able unobserved to see his guests. +But wonder upon wonder! what was he then obliged to behold with his own +eyes! + +"They have all of them become PIOUS again, they PRAY, they are +mad!"--said he, and was astonished beyond measure. And forsooth! all +these higher men, the two kings, the pope out of service, the evil +magician, the voluntary beggar, the wanderer and shadow, the old +soothsayer, the spiritually conscientious one, and the ugliest man--they +all lay on their knees like children and credulous old women, and +worshipped the ass. And just then began the ugliest man to gurgle and +snort, as if something unutterable in him tried to find expression; +when, however, he had actually found words, behold! it was a pious, +strange litany in praise of the adored and censed ass. And the litany +sounded thus: + +Amen! And glory and honour and wisdom and thanks and praise and strength +be to our God, from everlasting to everlasting! + +--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. + +He carrieth our burdens, he hath taken upon him the form of a servant, +he is patient of heart and never saith Nay; and he who loveth his God +chastiseth him. + +--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. + +He speaketh not: except that he ever saith Yea to the world which +he created: thus doth he extol his world. It is his artfulness that +speaketh not: thus is he rarely found wrong. + +--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. + +Uncomely goeth he through the world. Grey is the favourite colour in +which he wrappeth his virtue. Hath he spirit, then doth he conceal it; +every one, however, believeth in his long ears. + +--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. + +What hidden wisdom it is to wear long ears, and only to say Yea and +never Nay! Hath he not created the world in his own image, namely, as +stupid as possible? + +--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. + +Thou goest straight and crooked ways; it concerneth thee little what +seemeth straight or crooked unto us men. Beyond good and evil is thy +domain. It is thine innocence not to know what innocence is. + +--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. + +Lo! how thou spurnest none from thee, neither beggars nor kings. Thou +sufferest little children to come unto thee, and when the bad boys decoy +thee, then sayest thou simply, YE-A. + +--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. + +Thou lovest she-asses and fresh figs, thou art no food-despiser. A +thistle tickleth thy heart when thou chancest to be hungry. There is the +wisdom of a God therein. + +--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. + + + + +LXXVIII. THE ASS-FESTIVAL. + +1. + +At this place in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer +control himself; he himself cried out YE-A, louder even than the ass, +and sprang into the midst of his maddened guests. "Whatever are you +about, ye grown-up children?" he exclaimed, pulling up the praying ones +from the ground. "Alas, if any one else, except Zarathustra, had seen +you: + +Every one would think you the worst blasphemers, or the very foolishest +old women, with your new belief! + +And thou thyself, thou old pope, how is it in accordance with thee, to +adore an ass in such a manner as God?"-- + +"O Zarathustra," answered the pope, "forgive me, but in divine matters +I am more enlightened even than thou. And it is right that it should be +so. + +Better to adore God so, in this form, than in no form at all! Think over +this saying, mine exalted friend: thou wilt readily divine that in such +a saying there is wisdom. + +He who said 'God is a Spirit'--made the greatest stride and slide +hitherto made on earth towards unbelief: such a dictum is not easily +amended again on earth! + +Mine old heart leapeth and boundeth because there is still something +to adore on earth. Forgive it, O Zarathustra, to an old, pious +pontiff-heart!--" + +--"And thou," said Zarathustra to the wanderer and shadow, "thou callest +and thinkest thyself a free spirit? And thou here practisest such +idolatry and hierolatry? + +Worse verily, doest thou here than with thy bad brown girls, thou bad, +new believer!" + +"It is sad enough," answered the wanderer and shadow, "thou art right: +but how can I help it! The old God liveth again, O Zarathustra, thou +mayst say what thou wilt. + +The ugliest man is to blame for it all: he hath reawakened him. And +if he say that he once killed him, with Gods DEATH is always just a +prejudice." + +--"And thou," said Zarathustra, "thou bad old magician, what didst thou +do! Who ought to believe any longer in thee in this free age, when THOU +believest in such divine donkeyism? + +It was a stupid thing that thou didst; how couldst thou, a shrewd man, +do such a stupid thing!" + +"O Zarathustra," answered the shrewd magician, "thou art right, it was a +stupid thing,--it was also repugnant to me." + +--"And thou even," said Zarathustra to the spiritually conscientious +one, "consider, and put thy finger to thy nose! Doth nothing go against +thy conscience here? Is thy spirit not too cleanly for this praying and +the fumes of those devotees?" + +"There is something therein," said the spiritually conscientious one, +and put his finger to his nose, "there is something in this spectacle +which even doeth good to my conscience. + +Perhaps I dare not believe in God: certain it is however, that God +seemeth to me most worthy of belief in this form. + +God is said to be eternal, according to the testimony of the most pious: +he who hath so much time taketh his time. As slow and as stupid as +possible: THEREBY can such a one nevertheless go very far. + +And he who hath too much spirit might well become infatuated with +stupidity and folly. Think of thyself, O Zarathustra! + +Thou thyself--verily! even thou couldst well become an ass through +superabundance of wisdom. + +Doth not the true sage willingly walk on the crookedest paths? The +evidence teacheth it, O Zarathustra,--THINE OWN evidence!" + +--"And thou thyself, finally," said Zarathustra, and turned towards the +ugliest man, who still lay on the ground stretching up his arm to the +ass (for he gave it wine to drink). "Say, thou nondescript, what hast +thou been about! + +Thou seemest to me transformed, thine eyes glow, the mantle of the +sublime covereth thine ugliness: WHAT didst thou do? + +Is it then true what they say, that thou hast again awakened him? And +why? Was he not for good reasons killed and made away with? + +Thou thyself seemest to me awakened: what didst thou do? why didst THOU +turn round? Why didst THOU get converted? Speak, thou nondescript!" + +"O Zarathustra," answered the ugliest man, "thou art a rogue! + +Whether HE yet liveth, or again liveth, or is thoroughly dead--which of +us both knoweth that best? I ask thee. + +One thing however do I know,--from thyself did I learn it once, O +Zarathustra: he who wanteth to kill most thoroughly, LAUGHETH. + +'Not by wrath but by laughter doth one kill'--thus spakest thou once, +O Zarathustra, thou hidden one, thou destroyer without wrath, thou +dangerous saint,--thou art a rogue!" + +2. + +Then, however, did it come to pass that Zarathustra, astonished at such +merely roguish answers, jumped back to the door of his cave, and turning +towards all his guests, cried out with a strong voice: + +"O ye wags, all of you, ye buffoons! Why do ye dissemble and disguise +yourselves before me! + +How the hearts of all of you convulsed with delight and wickedness, +because ye had at last become again like little children--namely, +pious,-- + +--Because ye at last did again as children do--namely, prayed, folded +your hands and said 'good God'! + +But now leave, I pray you, THIS nursery, mine own cave, where to-day +all childishness is carried on. Cool down, here outside, your hot +child-wantonness and heart-tumult! + +To be sure: except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into +THAT kingdom of heaven." (And Zarathustra pointed aloft with his hands.) + +"But we do not at all want to enter into the kingdom of heaven: we have +become men,--SO WE WANT THE KINGDOM OF EARTH." + +3. + +And once more began Zarathustra to speak. "O my new friends," said he,-- +"ye strange ones, ye higher men, how well do ye now please me,-- + +--Since ye have again become joyful! Ye have, verily, all blossomed +forth: it seemeth to me that for such flowers as you, NEW FESTIVALS are +required. + +--A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some +old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow your souls bright. + +Forget not this night and this ass-festival, ye higher men! THAT did ye +devise when with me, that do I take as a good omen,--such things only +the convalescents devise! + +And should ye celebrate it again, this ass-festival, do it from love to +yourselves, do it also from love to me! And in remembrance of me!" + +Thus spake Zarathustra. + + + + +LXXIX. THE DRUNKEN SONG. + +1. + +Meanwhile one after another had gone out into the open air, and into the +cool, thoughtful night; Zarathustra himself, however, led the ugliest +man by the hand, that he might show him his night-world, and the great +round moon, and the silvery water-falls near his cave. There they at +last stood still beside one another; all of them old people, but with +comforted, brave hearts, and astonished in themselves that it was so +well with them on earth; the mystery of the night, however, came nigher +and nigher to their hearts. And anew Zarathustra thought to himself: +"Oh, how well do they now please me, these higher men!"--but he did not +say it aloud, for he respected their happiness and their silence.-- + +Then, however, there happened that which in this astonishing long day +was most astonishing: the ugliest man began once more and for the last +time to gurgle and snort, and when he had at length found expression, +behold! there sprang a question plump and plain out of his mouth, a +good, deep, clear question, which moved the hearts of all who listened +to him. + +"My friends, all of you," said the ugliest man, "what think ye? For the +sake of this day--_I_ am for the first time content to have lived mine +entire life. + +And that I testify so much is still not enough for me. It is worth while +living on the earth: one day, one festival with Zarathustra, hath taught +me to love the earth. + +'Was THAT--life?' will I say unto death. 'Well! Once more!' + +My friends, what think ye? Will ye not, like me, say unto death: 'Was +THAT--life? For the sake of Zarathustra, well! Once more!'"-- + +Thus spake the ugliest man; it was not, however, far from midnight. +And what took place then, think ye? As soon as the higher men heard his +question, they became all at once conscious of their transformation and +convalescence, and of him who was the cause thereof: then did they rush +up to Zarathustra, thanking, honouring, caressing him, and kissing his +hands, each in his own peculiar way; so that some laughed and some wept. +The old soothsayer, however, danced with delight; and though he was +then, as some narrators suppose, full of sweet wine, he was certainly +still fuller of sweet life, and had renounced all weariness. There are +even those who narrate that the ass then danced: for not in vain had the +ugliest man previously given it wine to drink. That may be the case, or +it may be otherwise; and if in truth the ass did not dance that evening, +there nevertheless happened then greater and rarer wonders than +the dancing of an ass would have been. In short, as the proverb of +Zarathustra saith: "What doth it matter!" + +2. + +When, however, this took place with the ugliest man, Zarathustra stood +there like one drunken: his glance dulled, his tongue faltered and his +feet staggered. And who could divine what thoughts then passed through +Zarathustra's soul? Apparently, however, his spirit retreated and fled +in advance and was in remote distances, and as it were "wandering on +high mountain-ridges," as it standeth written, "'twixt two seas, + +--Wandering 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud." Gradually, +however, while the higher men held him in their arms, he came back to +himself a little, and resisted with his hands the crowd of the honouring +and caring ones; but he did not speak. All at once, however, he turned +his head quickly, for he seemed to hear something: then laid he his +finger on his mouth and said: "COME!" + +And immediately it became still and mysterious round about; from +the depth however there came up slowly the sound of a clock-bell. +Zarathustra listened thereto, like the higher men; then, however, laid +he his finger on his mouth the second time, and said again: "COME! COME! +IT IS GETTING ON TO MIDNIGHT!"--and his voice had changed. But still +he had not moved from the spot. Then it became yet stiller and more +mysterious, and everything hearkened, even the ass, and Zarathustra's +noble animals, the eagle and the serpent,--likewise the cave of +Zarathustra and the big cool moon, and the night itself. Zarathustra, +however, laid his hand upon his mouth for the third time, and said: + +COME! COME! COME! LET US NOW WANDER! IT IS THE HOUR: LET US WANDER INTO +THE NIGHT! + +3. + +Ye higher men, it is getting on to midnight: then will I say something +into your ears, as that old clock-bell saith it into mine ear,-- + +--As mysteriously, as frightfully, and as cordially as that midnight +clock-bell speaketh it to me, which hath experienced more than one man: + +--Which hath already counted the smarting throbbings of your fathers' +hearts--ah! ah! how it sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream! the old, +deep, deep midnight! + +Hush! Hush! Then is there many a thing heard which may not be heard +by day; now however, in the cool air, when even all the tumult of your +hearts hath become still,-- + +--Now doth it speak, now is it heard, now doth it steal into +overwakeful, nocturnal souls: ah! ah! how the midnight sigheth! how it +laugheth in its dream! + +--Hearest thou not how it mysteriously, frightfully, and cordially +speaketh unto THEE, the old deep, deep midnight? + +O MAN, TAKE HEED! + +4. + +Woe to me! Whither hath time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells? The +world sleepeth-- + +Ah! Ah! The dog howleth, the moon shineth. Rather will I die, rather +will I die, than say unto you what my midnight-heart now thinketh. + +Already have I died. It is all over. Spider, why spinnest thou around +me? Wilt thou have blood? Ah! Ah! The dew falleth, the hour cometh-- + +--The hour in which I frost and freeze, which asketh and asketh and +asketh: "Who hath sufficient courage for it? + +--Who is to be master of the world? Who is going to say: THUS shall ye +flow, ye great and small streams!" + +--The hour approacheth: O man, thou higher man, take heed! this talk is +for fine ears, for thine ears--WHAT SAITH DEEP MIDNIGHT'S VOICE INDEED? + +5. + +It carrieth me away, my soul danceth. Day's-work! Day's-work! Who is to +be master of the world? + +The moon is cool, the wind is still. Ah! Ah! Have ye already flown high +enough? Ye have danced: a leg, nevertheless, is not a wing. + +Ye good dancers, now is all delight over: wine hath become lees, every +cup hath become brittle, the sepulchres mutter. + +Ye have not flown high enough: now do the sepulchres mutter: "Free the +dead! Why is it so long night? Doth not the moon make us drunken?" + +Ye higher men, free the sepulchres, awaken the corpses! Ah, why doth the +worm still burrow? There approacheth, there approacheth, the hour,-- + +--There boometh the clock-bell, there thrilleth still the heart, there +burroweth still the wood-worm, the heart-worm. Ah! Ah! THE WORLD IS +DEEP! + +6. + +Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranunculine +tone!--how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone, from the distance, +from the ponds of love! + +Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre! Every pain hath torn thy heart, +father-pain, fathers'-pain, forefathers'-pain; thy speech hath become +ripe,-- + +--Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine anchorite +heart--now sayest thou: The world itself hath become ripe, the grape +turneth brown, + +--Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness. Ye higher men, do ye not +feel it? There welleth up mysteriously an odour, + +--A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown, +gold-wine-odour of old happiness, + +--Of drunken midnight-death happiness, which singeth: the world is deep, +AND DEEPER THAN THE DAY COULD READ! + +7. + +Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I am too pure for thee. Touch me not! +Hath not my world just now become perfect? + +My skin is too pure for thy hands. Leave me alone, thou dull, doltish, +stupid day! Is not the midnight brighter? + +The purest are to be masters of the world, the least known, the +strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day. + +O day, thou gropest for me? Thou feelest for my happiness? For thee am I +rich, lonesome, a treasure-pit, a gold chamber? + +O world, thou wantest ME? Am I worldly for thee? Am I spiritual for +thee? Am I divine for thee? But day and world, ye are too coarse,-- + +--Have cleverer hands, grasp after deeper happiness, after deeper +unhappiness, grasp after some God; grasp not after me: + +--Mine unhappiness, my happiness is deep, thou strange day, but yet am I +no God, no God's-hell: DEEP IS ITS WOE. + +8. + +God's woe is deeper, thou strange world! Grasp at God's woe, not at me! +What am I! A drunken sweet lyre,-- + +--A midnight-lyre, a bell-frog, which no one understandeth, but which +MUST speak before deaf ones, ye higher men! For ye do not understand me! + +Gone! Gone! O youth! O noontide! O afternoon! Now have come evening and +night and midnight,--the dog howleth, the wind: + +--Is the wind not a dog? It whineth, it barketh, it howleth. Ah! Ah! +how she sigheth! how she laugheth, how she wheezeth and panteth, the +midnight! + +How she just now speaketh soberly, this drunken poetess! hath she +perhaps overdrunk her drunkenness? hath she become overawake? doth she +ruminate? + +--Her woe doth she ruminate over, in a dream, the old, deep +midnight--and still more her joy. For joy, although woe be deep, JOY IS +DEEPER STILL THAN GRIEF CAN BE. + +9. + +Thou grape-vine! Why dost thou praise me? Have I not cut thee! I am +cruel, thou bleedest--: what meaneth thy praise of my drunken cruelty? + +"Whatever hath become perfect, everything mature--wanteth to die!" so +sayest thou. Blessed, blessed be the vintner's knife! But everything +immature wanteth to live: alas! + +Woe saith: "Hence! Go! Away, thou woe!" But everything that suffereth +wanteth to live, that it may become mature and lively and longing, + +--Longing for the further, the higher, the brighter. "I want heirs," +so saith everything that suffereth, "I want children, I do not want +MYSELF,"-- + +Joy, however, doth not want heirs, it doth not want children,--joy +wanteth itself, it wanteth eternity, it wanteth recurrence, it wanteth +everything eternally-like-itself. + +Woe saith: "Break, bleed, thou heart! Wander, thou leg! Thou wing, fly! +Onward! upward! thou pain!" Well! Cheer up! O mine old heart: WOE SAITH: +"HENCE! GO!" + +10. + +Ye higher men, what think ye? Am I a soothsayer? Or a dreamer? Or a +drunkard? Or a dream-reader? Or a midnight-bell? + +Or a drop of dew? Or a fume and fragrance of eternity? Hear ye it not? +Smell ye it not? Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also +mid-day,-- + +Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,--go +away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool. + +Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto +ALL woe. All things are enlinked, enlaced and enamoured,-- + +--Wanted ye ever once to come twice; said ye ever: "Thou pleasest me, +happiness! Instant! Moment!" then wanted ye ALL to come back again! + +--All anew, all eternal, all enlinked, enlaced and enamoured, Oh, then +did ye LOVE the world,-- + +--Ye eternal ones, ye love it eternally and for all time: and also unto +woe do ye say: Hence! Go! but come back! FOR JOYS ALL WANT--ETERNITY! + +11. + +All joy wanteth the eternity of all things, it wanteth honey, it +wanteth lees, it wanteth drunken midnight, it wanteth graves, it wanteth +grave-tears' consolation, it wanteth gilded evening-red-- + +--WHAT doth not joy want! it is thirstier, heartier, hungrier, more +frightful, more mysterious, than all woe: it wanteth ITSELF, it biteth +into ITSELF, the ring's will writheth in it,-- + +--It wanteth love, it wanteth hate, it is over-rich, it bestoweth, it +throweth away, it beggeth for some one to take from it, it thanketh the +taker, it would fain be hated,-- + +--So rich is joy that it thirsteth for woe, for hell, for hate, for +shame, for the lame, for the WORLD,--for this world, Oh, ye know it +indeed! + +Ye higher men, for you doth it long, this joy, this irrepressible, +blessed joy--for your woe, ye failures! For failures, longeth all +eternal joy. + +For joys all want themselves, therefore do they also want grief! O +happiness, O pain! Oh break, thou heart! Ye higher men, do learn it, +that joys want eternity. + +--Joys want the eternity of ALL things, they WANT DEEP, PROFOUND +ETERNITY! + +12. + +Have ye now learned my song? Have ye divined what it would say? Well! +Cheer up! Ye higher men, sing now my roundelay! + +Sing now yourselves the song, the name of which is "Once more," the +signification of which is "Unto all eternity!"--sing, ye higher men, +Zarathustra's roundelay! + + O man! Take heed! + What saith deep midnight's voice indeed? + "I slept my sleep--, + "From deepest dream I've woke, and plead:-- + "The world is deep, + "And deeper than the day could read. + "Deep is its woe--, + "Joy--deeper still than grief can be: + "Woe saith: Hence! Go! + "But joys all want eternity-, + "-Want deep, profound eternity!" + + + + +LXXX. THE SIGN. + +In the morning, however, after this night, Zarathustra jumped up from +his couch, and, having girded his loins, he came out of his cave glowing +and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains. + +"Thou great star," spake he, as he had spoken once before, "thou deep +eye of happiness, what would be all thy happiness if thou hadst not +THOSE for whom thou shinest! + +And if they remained in their chambers whilst thou art already awake, +and comest and bestowest and distributest, how would thy proud modesty +upbraid for it! + +Well! they still sleep, these higher men, whilst _I_ am awake: THEY are +not my proper companions! Not for them do I wait here in my mountains. + +At my work I want to be, at my day: but they understand not what are the +signs of my morning, my step--is not for them the awakening-call. + +They still sleep in my cave; their dream still drinketh at my drunken +songs. The audient ear for ME--the OBEDIENT ear, is yet lacking in their +limbs." + +--This had Zarathustra spoken to his heart when the sun arose: then +looked he inquiringly aloft, for he heard above him the sharp call of +his eagle. "Well!" called he upwards, "thus is it pleasing and proper to +me. Mine animals are awake, for I am awake. + +Mine eagle is awake, and like me honoureth the sun. With eagle-talons +doth it grasp at the new light. Ye are my proper animals; I love you. + +But still do I lack my proper men!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra; then, however, it happened that all on a sudden +he became aware that he was flocked around and fluttered around, as if +by innumerable birds,--the whizzing of so many wings, however, and the +crowding around his head was so great that he shut his eyes. And verily, +there came down upon him as it were a cloud, like a cloud of arrows +which poureth upon a new enemy. But behold, here it was a cloud of love, +and showered upon a new friend. + +"What happeneth unto me?" thought Zarathustra in his astonished heart, +and slowly seated himself on the big stone which lay close to the exit +from his cave. But while he grasped about with his hands, around him, +above him and below him, and repelled the tender birds, behold, there +then happened to him something still stranger: for he grasped thereby +unawares into a mass of thick, warm, shaggy hair; at the same time, +however, there sounded before him a roar,--a long, soft lion-roar. + +"THE SIGN COMETH," said Zarathustra, and a change came over his heart. +And in truth, when it turned clear before him, there lay a yellow, +powerful animal at his feet, resting its head on his knee,--unwilling to +leave him out of love, and doing like a dog which again findeth its old +master. The doves, however, were no less eager with their love than the +lion; and whenever a dove whisked over its nose, the lion shook its head +and wondered and laughed. + +When all this went on Zarathustra spake only a word: "MY CHILDREN ARE +NIGH, MY CHILDREN"--, then he became quite mute. His heart, however, +was loosed, and from his eyes there dropped down tears and fell upon +his hands. And he took no further notice of anything, but sat there +motionless, without repelling the animals further. Then flew the doves +to and fro, and perched on his shoulder, and caressed his white hair, +and did not tire of their tenderness and joyousness. The strong lion, +however, licked always the tears that fell on Zarathustra's hands, and +roared and growled shyly. Thus did these animals do.-- + +All this went on for a long time, or a short time: for properly +speaking, there is NO time on earth for such things--. Meanwhile, +however, the higher men had awakened in Zarathustra's cave, and +marshalled themselves for a procession to go to meet Zarathustra, and +give him their morning greeting: for they had found when they awakened +that he no longer tarried with them. When, however, they reached the +door of the cave and the noise of their steps had preceded them, the +lion started violently; it turned away all at once from Zarathustra, and +roaring wildly, sprang towards the cave. The higher men, however, when +they heard the lion roaring, cried all aloud as with one voice, fled +back and vanished in an instant. + +Zarathustra himself, however, stunned and strange, rose from his seat, +looked around him, stood there astonished, inquired of his heart, +bethought himself, and remained alone. "What did I hear?" said he at +last, slowly, "what happened unto me just now?" + +But soon there came to him his recollection, and he took in at a glance +all that had taken place between yesterday and to-day. "Here is indeed +the stone," said he, and stroked his beard, "on IT sat I yester-morn; +and here came the soothsayer unto me, and here heard I first the cry +which I heard just now, the great cry of distress. + +O ye higher men, YOUR distress was it that the old soothsayer foretold +to me yester-morn,-- + +--Unto your distress did he want to seduce and tempt me: 'O +Zarathustra,' said he to me, 'I come to seduce thee to thy last sin.' + +To my last sin?" cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own +words: "WHAT hath been reserved for me as my last sin?" + +--And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself, and sat down +again on the big stone and meditated. Suddenly he sprang up,-- + +"FELLOW-SUFFERING! FELLOW-SUFFERING WITH THE HIGHER MEN!" he cried out, +and his countenance changed into brass. "Well! THAT--hath had its time! + +My suffering and my fellow-suffering--what matter about them! Do I then +strive after HAPPINESS? I strive after my WORK! + +Well! The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra hath grown +ripe, mine hour hath come:-- + +This is MY morning, MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT +NOONTIDE!"-- + +Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a +morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains. diff --git a/python_markov_chain.py b/python_markov_chain.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12ce2a0 --- /dev/null +++ b/python_markov_chain.py @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +# _*_ coding: utf-8 _*_ + +import nltk +import random + +file = open('Text/Walden.txt', 'r') +walden = file.read() +walden = walden.split() + + +def makePairs(arr): + pairs = [] + for i in range(len(arr)): + if i < len(arr) - 1: + temp = (arr[i], arr[i + 1]) + pairs.append(temp) + return pairs + + +def generate(cfd, word='the', num=500): + for i in range(num): + # make an array with the words shown by proper count + arr = [] + for j in cfd[word]: + for k in range(cfd[word][j]): + arr.append(j) + print(word, end=' ') + + # choose the word randomly from the conditional distribution + word = arr[int((len(arr)) * random.random())] + +pairs = makePairs(walden) +cfd = nltk.ConditionalFreqDist(pairs) +generate(cfd)