Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Alexander Tille - 1896.djvu/134

 IOO THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, I

learnt how to live and to love the earth and how to laugh besides !

Believe me, my brethren ! He died too early ; he himself would have revoked his doctrine, had he reached mine age ! Noble enough to revoke he was !

But he was still unripe. Unripely the youth loveth, and unripely also he hateth man and earth. Fettered and heavy are still his mind and the wings of his spirit.

But in a man there is more of child than in a youth, and less of melancholy : he better understand- eth how to manage death and life.

Free for death and free in death, a holy Nay-sayer, when there is no longer time to say yea: thus he understandeth how to manage death and life.

That your dying may not be a blasphemy of man and earth, my friends, that is what I ask from the honey of your soul.

In your dying your spirit and your virtue shall glow on, like the evening-red round the earth : or else your dying hath not succeeded well.

Thus I would die myself, that ye friends for my sake may love the earth more than before; and I would become dust again, in order to have rest in earth which gave me birth.

Of a truth, Zarathustra had a goal, he threw his ball : now, friends, be the heirs of my goal, I throw the golden ball unto you.

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