object:2.02 - UPON THE BLESSED ISLES
book class:Thus Spoke Zarathustra
author class:Friedrich Nietzsche
subject class:Philosophy
subject class:Poetry
class:chapter
UPON THE BLESSED ISLES
The figs are falling from the trees; they are good and
sweet; and, as they fall, their red skin bursts. I am a
north wind to ripe figs.
Thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends;
now consume their juice and their sweet meat. It is
autumn about us, and pure sky and afternoon. Behold
what fullness there is about usl And out of such overflow
it is beautiful to look out upon distant seas. Once one
said God when one looked upon distant seas; but now
I have taught you to say: overman.
God is a conjecture; but I desire that your conjectures
should not reach beyond your creative will. Could you
create a god? Then do not speak to me of any gods. But
you could well create the overman. Perhaps not you
yourselves, my brothers. But into fathers and forefa thers
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of the overman you could re-create yourselves: and let
this be your best creation.
God is a conjecture; but I desire that your conjectures should be limited by what is thinkable. Could you
think a god? But this is what the will to truth should
mean to you: that everything be changed into what is
thinkable for man, visible for man, feelable by man. You
should think through your own senses to their consequences.
And what you have called world, that shall be created
only by you: your reason, your image, your will, your
love shall thus be realized. And verily, for your own
bliss, you lovers of knowledge.
And how would you bear life without this hope, you
lovers of knowledge? You could not have been born
either into the incomprehensible or into the irrational.
But let me reveal my heart to you entirely, my
friends: if there were gods, how could I endure not to
be a godl Hence there are no gods. Though I drew this
conclusion, now it draws me.
God is a conjecture; but who could drain all the
agony of this conjecture without dying? Shall his faith
be taken away from the creator, and from the eagle, his
soaring to eagle heights?
God is a thought that makes crooked all that is
straight, and makes turn whatever stands. How? Should
time be gone, and all that is impermanent a mere lie?
To think this is a dizzy whirl for human bones, and a
vomit for the stomach; verily, I call it the turning sickness to conjecture thus. Evil I call it, and misanthropic
-all this teaching of the One and the Plenum and the
Unmoved and the Sated and the Permanent. All the
permanent-that is only a parable. And the poets lie
too much.
It is of time and becoming that the best parables
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should speak: let them be a praise and a justification of
all impermanence.
Creation-that is the great redemption from suffering,
and life's growing light. But that the creator may be,
suffering is needed and much change. Indeed, there
must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators.
Thus are you advocates and justifiers of all impermanence. To be the child who is newly born, the creator
must also want to be the mother who gives birth and
the pangs of the birth-giver.
Verily, through a hundred souls I have already passed
on my way, and through a hundred cradles and birth
pangs. Many a farewell have I taken; I know the heartrending last hours. But thus my creative will, my destiny, wills it. Or, to say it more honestly: this very
destiny-my will wills.
Whatever in me has feeling, suffers and is in prison;
but my will always comes to me as my liberator and
joy-bringer. Willing liberates: that is the true teaching
of will and liberty-thus Zarathustra teaches it. Willing
no more and esteeming no more and creating no moreoh, that this great weariness might always remain far
from mel In knowledge too I feel only my will's joy in
begetting and becoming; and if there is innocence in
my knowledge, it is because the will to beget is in it.
Away from God and gods this will has lured me; what
could one create if gods existed?
But my fervent will to create impels me ever again
toward man; thus is the hammer impelled toward the
stone. 0 men, in the stone there sleeps an image,
the image of my images. Alas, that it must sleep in the
hardest, the ugliest stone! Now my hammer rages
cruelly against its prison. Pieces of rock rain from the
stone: what is that to me? I want to perfect it; for a
shadow came to me-the stillest and lightest of all
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things once came to me. The beauty of the overman
came to me as a shadow. 0 my brothers, what are the
gods to me now?
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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