Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Alexander Tille - 1896.djvu/396

 362 THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, IV

What matter whether it be great or small? Whether it be called swamp or sky? A hand's breadth of ground is enough for me ; if it only be actually a ground and bottom !

A hand's breadth of ground thereon one can stand. In the proper conscientiousness of knowledge there is nothing great and nothing small."

"Thus thou art perhaps the perceiver of the leech?" asked Zarathustra; "and thou followest the leech unto its last ground, thou conscientious one ? "

" O Zarathustra," answered he who had been trodden on, " that would be something immense ! How could I dare to undertake that ?

The thing whose master and knower I am that is the leech's brain. That is my world !

And it is a world as others are ! But forgive my pride finding expression here. For here I have not my like. Therefore I said : ' Here am I at home.'

How long have I followed out that one thing, the leech's brain, that the slippery truth might no more escape me here ! Here is my kingdom !

To get at that, I have thrown away everything else ; for the sake of it, everything else hath become indifferent unto me ; and close unto my knowledge dwelleth my dense ignorance.

The conscience of my spirit demandeth from me that I should know one thing and not know every-

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