On Joys and Passions

My brother, if you have a virtue and it is your virtue, you have it in common with no one.

To be sure, you want to call it by name and caress it; you want to tug its ear and have your fun with it.

And behold! Now you have its name in common with the people, and with your virtue you have become people and herd!

You would do better to say: “Unutterable and nameless is what makes the torment and sweetness of my soul and is also the hunger of my entrails.”

Let your virtue be too high for the familiarity of names: and if you must speak of it, do not be ashamed to stammer about it.

So speak and stammer: “This is my good, this I love, thus it pleases me wholly, thus alone do I want the good.

I do not want it as the law of a god, I do not want it as a human statute and necessity: let it be no signpost for me to over-earths and paradises.

It is an earthly virtue that I love: there is little prudence in it, and least of all the reason of everyone.

But this bird built its nest with me: that is why I love it and hold it to my heart,—now let it sit with me on its golden eggs.”

So you shall stammer and praise your virtue.

Once you had passions and called them evil. But now you have only your virtues: they grew out of your passions.

You laid your highest goal on the heart of these passions: then they became your virtues and your passions of joy.

And whether you came from the race of the hot-tempered or of the lustful or of the fanatics of faith or of the vengeful:

In the end all your passions became virtues and all your devils angels.

Once you had wild dogs in your cellar: but in the end they turned into birds and lovely singers.

Out of your poisons you brewed your balm; you milked your cow Gloom,—now you drink the sweet milk of her udder.

And nothing evil grows out of you from now on, unless it be the evil that grows out of the struggle of your virtues.

My brother, if you are fortunate, you have one virtue and no more: so you go more easily over the bridge.

It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot; and many a man went into the desert and killed himself because he was weary of being the battle and battlefield of virtues.

My brother, are war and battle evil? But this evil is necessary; necessary are the envy and the mistrust and the slander among your virtues.

Look how each of your virtues covets the highest: it wants your whole spirit to be its herald; it wants your whole strength in wrath, hatred, and love.

Each virtue is jealous of the others, and jealousy is a terrible thing. Virtues too can perish of jealousy.

Whoever is ringed about by the flame of jealousy will at last, like the scorpion, turn the poisoned sting against himself.

Ah, my brother, have you never yet seen a virtue slander itself and stab itself?

The human being is something that must be overcome: and that is why you shall love your virtues,—for you will perish of them.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.