Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Alexander Tille - 1896.djvu/339

 OF OLD AND NEW TABLES 305

Let the shopkeeper rule there where everything that still shineth, is shopkeepers' gold. It is no longer the time of kings. For what to-day calleth itself a people, deserveth no kings.

Behold, how these peoples now themselves act like shopkeepers. They seek the smallest profits out of every sort of rubbish.

They lie in ambush for each other ; they obtain things from each other by lying in wait. That is called by them 'good neighbourliness.' Oh, blessed remote time, when a people said unto itself : ' I will be* master over peoples ! '

For, my brethren, what is best, shall rule ; what is best, will rule ! And where the teaching soundeth different, the best is lacking.

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If they had bread for nothing, alas ! for what would they cry ! Their maintenance that is their proper entertainment. And they shall have a hard life!

Beasts of prey they are. In their ' working ' there is even preying, in their ' earning ' there is even outwitting ! Therefore they shall have a hard life !

Thus they shall become better beasts of prey, finer, cleverer, more like man. For man is the best beast of prey.

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