Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/88



lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad.

No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbor valueth.

Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. Much I found here called bad, which was there decked with purple honors.

Never did the one neighbor understand the other: ever did his soul marvel at his neighbor's delusion and wickedness.

A tablet of excellences hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the tablet of their triumphs; behold, it is the voice of their Will to Power.

It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard they call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique and hardest of all,—they extol as holy.

Whatever makes them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbors, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the test and the meaning of all else.

Verily, my brother, if thou only knewest but a people's need, its land, its sky, and its neighbor, then you wouldst devine the law of its surmountings,, and why it climbth up that ladder to its hope.

"Always shall thou be the foremost and prominent above all others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except the friend"—