Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Alexander Tille - 1896.djvu/231

 OF SALVATION 197

the folk teach about cripples. And why should not Zarathustra learn from the folk, what the folk learn from Zarathustra?

But it is of the least moment for me since I came to live among men, to see : these are lacking an eye, and that man is lacking an ear, and a third one is lacking a leg, and there are others who have lost the tongue or the nose or the head.

I see and have seen worse things and many kinds of things so abominable that I should not like to speak of all things ; and about some I should not even stand silent : namely men who are lacking everything except that they have one thing too much ; men who are nothing but a great eye, or a great mouth, or a great womb, or something else great. Reversed cripples I call such.

And when I came out of my solitude and crossed this bridge for the first time I trusted not mine eyes, and gazed there again and again, and said at last : 'That is an ear, an ear as great as a man ! ' I gazed there still more thoroughly. And really, under the ear something moved, which was pitifully small and poor and slender. And, truly, that immense ear was carried by a small, thin stalk ; and the stalk was a man ! He who would put a glass before his eye could even rec- ognise a small envious face ; also that a little bloated soul was hanging down from the stalk. The folk, however, informed me that that great ear was not only

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