Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/330

 who pick up profit out of all kinds of rubbish- at this rabble that stinks to heaven,

-At this gilded, falsified rabble, whose fathers were pickpockets, or carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives compliant, lewd and forgetful:- for they are all of them not far different from harlots-

Rabble above, rabble below! What are 'poor' and 'rich' at present! That distinction did I unlearn,- then did I flee away further and ever further, until I came to those kine."

Thus spoke the peaceful one, and puffed himself and perspired with his words: so that the kine wondered anew. Zarathustra, however, kept looking into his face with a smile, all the time the man talked so severely- and shook silently his head.

"You do violence to yourself, you Preacher-on-the-Mount, when you use such severe words. For such severity neither your mouth nor your eye have been given you.

Nor, methinks, has your stomach either: to it all such rage and hatred and foaming-over is repugnant. Your stomach wants softer things: you are not a butcher.

Rather seem you to me a plant-eater and a root-man. Perhaps you grind corn. Certainly, however, you are averse to fleshly joys, and you love honey."

"You have divined me well," answered the voluntary beggar, with lightened heart. "I love honey, I also grind corn; for I have sought out what tastes sweetly and makes pure breath:

-Also what requires a long time, a day's-work and a mouth's-work for gentle idlers and sluggards.

Furthest, to be sure, have those kine carried it: they have created ruminating and lying in the sun. They also abstain from all heavy thoughts which inflate the heart."

-"Well!" said Zarathustra, "you should also see my