On Scholars

As I lay asleep, a sheep ate at the ivy wreath on my head—ate, and said as it did: “Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.”

It said this and went off, stiff and proud. A child told me of it.

I like to lie here where the children play, by the broken wall, among thistles and red poppies.

To the children I am still a scholar, and to the thistles and red poppies too. They are innocent, even in their malice.

But to the sheep I am one no longer: so my lot wills it—blessed be it!

For this is the truth: I have moved out of the house of the scholars: and I slammed the door behind me as well.

Too long my soul sat hungry at their table; unlike them, I have not been trained to knowing the way one is trained to crack nuts.

I love freedom and the air over fresh earth; I would rather sleep on oxhides than on their honors and respectabilities.

I am too hot and burned by my own thoughts: often it is about to take my breath away. Then I must go into the open air and away from all dusty rooms.

But they sit cool in cool shade: in all things they want only to be spectators, and they take care not to sit where the sun burns on the steps.

Like those who stand in the street and gape at the people passing by: so they too wait and gape at thoughts that others have thought.

If you take hold of them with your hands, they give off dust like flour sacks, and involuntarily; but who would guess that their dust comes from grain and from the yellow delight of summer fields?

When they act wise, their little sayings and truths make me shiver: there is often a smell to their wisdom as if it came from the swamp: and truly, I have heard the frog croaking out of it too!

They are skillful, they have clever fingers: what does my simplicity want beside their multiplicity! All threading and knotting and weaving their fingers understand: thus they knit the stockings of the spirit!

Good clockworks they are: only take care to wind them up correctly! Then they show the hour without fail and make a modest noise as they do.

Like mills they work, and like stamping mills: just throw them your grains of fruit!—they know well how to grind grain small and make white dust of it.

They watch one another’s fingers closely and do not trust one another overmuch. Inventive in little cunnings, they wait for those whose knowledge goes on lame feet—like spiders they wait.

I always saw them preparing poison with caution; and always they put on gloves of glass to do it.

They know how to play with loaded dice, too; and I found them playing so eagerly that they sweated over it.

We are strangers to one another, and their virtues go against my taste even more than their falsehoods and loaded dice.

And when I lived with them, I lived above them. They resented me for that.

They will hear nothing of anyone walking above their heads; and so they put wood and earth and filth between me and their heads.

Thus they muffled the sound of my steps: and until now I have been heard worst by the most learned.

All human faults and weaknesses they put between themselves and me:—a “false floor,” they call it in their houses.

But in spite of that I walk with my thoughts above their heads; and even if I wanted to walk upon my own faults, I would still be above them and their heads.

For human beings are not equal: thus speaks justice. And what I want, they may not want!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.