Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FOURTH AND LAST PART. 61. LXI. THE HONEY SACRIFICE. (continued)

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!"