On the Preachers of Death

There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom turning away from life must be preached.

Full is the earth of the superfluous; life is spoiled by the many-too-many. May they be lured away from this life with “eternal life”!

“Yellow ones”: so the preachers of death are called, or “black ones.” But I want to show them to you in other colors as well.

There are the terrible ones who carry the beast of prey around inside themselves and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are still self-laceration.

They have not even become human beings yet, these terrible ones: may they preach turning away from life and go off themselves!

There are the consumptives of the soul: hardly are they born when they already begin to die, and they long for teachings of weariness and renunciation.

They would like to be dead, and we should approve of their will! Let us beware of waking these dead and damaging these living coffins!

They meet a sick man or an old man or a corpse; and at once they say, “Life is refuted!”

But only they are refuted, and their eye, which sees only the one face of existence.

Wrapped in thick melancholy and eager for the little accidents that bring death: so they wait and clench their teeth.

Or else: they reach for sweets and mock their own childishness as they do: they cling to their straw of life and mock that they are still clinging to a straw.

Their wisdom runs: “A fool, whoever stays alive, but so much are we fools! And just that is the most foolish thing about life!”—

“Life is only suffering”—so others say, and they do not lie: so see to it, then, that you cease! So see to it, then, that life ceases, the life that is only suffering!

And let the teaching of your virtue run thus: “You shall kill yourself! You shall steal yourself away!”—

“Lust is sin,” so say some who preach death, “let us go aside and beget no children!”

“Giving birth is toilsome,” say others, “why go on giving birth? One gives birth only to the unhappy!” And they too are preachers of death.

“Pity is necessary,” so say the third. “Take what I have! Take what I am! All the less does life bind me!”

If they were pitying through and through, they would spoil life for their neighbors. To be evil—that would be their true goodness.

But they want to get free of life: what do they care if they bind others still more tightly with their chains and gifts!—

And you too, for whom life is furious work and unrest: are you not very weary of life? Are you not very ripe for the preaching of death?

All of you who love furious work and what is fast, new, strange,—you bear yourselves badly; your diligence is flight and the will to forget yourselves.

If you believed more in life, you would throw yourselves less to the moment. But you do not have enough content in you for waiting—and not even for laziness!

Everywhere the voice of those who preach death resounds: and the earth is full of those to whom death must be preached.

Or “eternal life”: it is all the same to me,—provided only that they go off quickly!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.