Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/162

 Where is beauty? Where I must will with my whole Will; where I will love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image.

Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. Will to love: that is to be ready also for death. Thus do I speak to you cowards!

But now does your emasculated ogling profess to be "contemplation!" And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened "beautiful!" Oh, you violators of noble names!

But it shall be your curse, you immaculate ones, you pure discerners, that you shall never bring forth, even though you lie broad and teeming on the horizon!

You fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that your heart overflows, you cozeners?

But my words are poor, contemptible, stammering words: gladly do I pick up what falls from the table at your repasts.

Yet still can I say therewith the truth- to dissemblers! Yes, my fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall- tickle the noses of dissemblers!

Bad air is always about you and your repasts: your lascivious thoughts, your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air!

Dare only to believe in yourselves- in yourselves and in your inward parts! He who does not believe in himself always lies.

A God's mask have you hung in front of you, you "pure ones": into a God's mask has your execrable coiling snake crawled.

Verily you deceive, you "contemplative ones!" Even Zarathustra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent's coil with which it was stuffed.

A God's soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games,