Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/324

 For that I am too rich, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most unutterable! your shame, O Zarathustra, honored me!

With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful,- that I might find the only one who at present teaches that 'pity is obtrusive'- yourself, O Zarathustra!

-Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the virtue that rushes to do so.

That however- namely, pity- is called virtue itself at present by all petty people:- they have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.

Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looks over the backs of thronging flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people.

As the heron looks contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and souls.

Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: so we have at last given them power as well;- and now do they teach that 'good is only what petty people call good.'

And 'truth' is at present what the preacher spoke who himself sprang from them, that singular saint and advocate of the petty people, who testified of himself: 'I- am the truth.'

That shameless one has long made the petty people greatly puffed up,- he who taught no small error when he taught: 'I- am the truth.'

Has a shameless one ever been answered more courteously?- You, however, O Zarathustra, passed him by, and said: 'No! No! Three times No!'

You warned against his error; you warned- the first