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Chapter Lxiv. the Leech.

Thus Spake Zarathustra: a Book for All and None · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche — chapter 44 of 59 · ~166 words · public domain

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Among the higher men whom Zarathustra wishes to save, is also the scientific specialist—the man who honestly and scrupulously pursues his investigations, as Darwin did, in one department of knowledge. “I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.” “The spiritually conscientious one,” he is called in this discourse. Zarathustra steps on him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding from the violence he has done to himself by his self-imposed task, speaks proudly of his little sphere of knowledge—his little hand’s breadth of ground on Zarathustra’s territory, philosophy. “Where mine honesty ceaseth,” says the true scientific specialist, “there am I blind and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want I also to be honest—namely, severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel, and inexorable.” Zarathustra greatly respecting this man, invites him too to the cave, and then vanishes in answer to another cry for help.

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