Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FIRST PART. ZARATHUSTRA'S PROLOGUE. ZARATHUSTRA'S DISCOURSES. 9. IX. THE PREACHERS OF DEATH. (continued)

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.