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“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.
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.
