Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/161

 along over the ground. Behold, cat-like does the moon come along, and dishonestly.-

This parable speak I to you sentimental dissemblers, to you, the "pure discerners!" You do I call- covetous ones!

Also you love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!- but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience- you are like the moon!

To despise the earthly has your spirit been persuaded, but not your bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you!

And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and goes in by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame.

"That would be the highest thing for me"- so says your lying spirit to itself- "to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, with hanging-out tongue:

To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness- cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes!

That would be the dearest thing to me"- thus do the seduced one seduce himself,- "to love the earth as the moon loves it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty.

And this do I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets."-

Oh, you sentimental dissemblers, you covetous ones! You lack innocence in your desire: and now do you defame desiring on that account!

Not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do you love the earth!

Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who seeks to create beyond himself, has for me the purest will.