Part 7

"Lo, the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh to pieces their tables of values,--the law-breaker, the criminal:--but he is the creator.

"The destroyer of morality I am called by the good and just: my tale is immoral."

Nietzsche's favorite animals are the proud eagle and the cunning serpent, the former because it typifies aristocracy, the latter as the wisest among all creatures of the earth. It is a strange and exceptional combination, for these two animals are commonly represented as enemies. The eagle and serpent was the emblem of ancient Elis and is at present the coat-of-arms of Mexico, but in both cases the eagle is interpreted to be the conqueror of the serpent, not its friend, carrying it as his prey in his claws.

Zarathustra's philosophy is a combination of the eagle's pride and the serpent's wisdom, which Nietzsche describes thus:

"Lo! an eagle swept through the air in wide circles, a serpent hanging from it not like a prey, but like a friend: coiling round its neck.

"They are mine animals,' said Zarathustra and rejoiced heartily.

"The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun have set out to reconnoitre.

"They wish to learn whether Zarathustra still liveth. Verily, do I still live.

"More dangerous than among animals I found it among men. Dangerous ways are taken by Zarathustra. Let mine animals lead me!"

Here is a sentence worth quoting:

"Of all that is written I love only that which the writer wrote with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt learn that blood is spirit."

In another chapter on the back-worlds-men Nietzsche writes:

"Once Zarathustra threw his spell beyond man, like all back-worlds-men. Then the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tortured God.

"Alas! brethren, that God whom I created was man's work and man's madness, like all Gods!

"Man he was, and but a poor piece of man and the I. From mine own ashes and flame it came unto me, that ghost yea verily! It did not come unto me from beyond!

"What happened, brethren? I overcame myself, the sufferer, and carrying mine own ashes unto the mountains invented for myself a brighter flame. And lo! the ghost departed from me!

"Now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and pain to believe in such ghosts: suffering it would be for me and humiliation. Thus spake I unto the back-worlds-men."

Nietzsche's self is not ideal but material; it is not thought, not even the will, but the body. The following passage sounds like Vedantism as interpreted by a materialist:

"He who is awake and knoweth saith: Body I am throughout, and nothing besides; and soul is merely a word for a something in body.

"Body is one great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a herdsman.

"Also thy little reason, my brother, which thou callest 'spirit'--it is a tool of thy body, a little tool and toy of thy great reason.

"T, thou sayest and art proud of that word. But the greater thing is--which thou wilt not believe--thy body and its great reason. It doth not say T, but it is the acting 'I.'

"The self ever listeneth and seeketh: it compareth, subdueth, conquereth, destroyeth. It ruleth and is the ruler of the 'I' as well.

"Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, standeth a mighty lord, an unknown wise man--whose name is self. In thy body he dwelleth, thy body he is.

"There is more reason in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who can know why thy body needeth thy beat wisdom?

"Thy self laugheth at thine 'I' and its prancings: What are these boundings and flights of thought? it saith unto itself. A round-about way to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the I and the suggester of its concepts.

"The creative self created for itself valuing and despising, it created for itself lust and woe. The creative body created for itself the spirit to be the hand of its will."

One of the best passages in Zarathustra's sermons is Nietzsche's command to love the overman, the man of the distant future: