Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/135

 Revenge is in your soul: wherever you bite, there arises black scab; with revenge, your poison makes the soul giddy!

Thus do I speak to you in parable, you who make the soul giddy, you preachers of equality! Tarantulas are you to me, and secretly revengeful ones!

But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height.

Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word "justice."

Because, for man to be redeemed from revenge- that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.

Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance"- thus do they talk to one another.

"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us"- thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.

"And 'Will to Equality'- that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that has power will we raise an outcry!"

You preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence cries thus in you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!

Fretted conceit and suppressed envy- perhaps your fathers' conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.

What the father has hid comes out in the son; and oft have I found in the son the father's revealed secret.

Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspires them- but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that makes them so.