On Redemption

When Zarathustra was crossing over the great bridge one day, the cripples and beggars surrounded him, and a hunchback spoke to him thus:

“Look, Zarathustra! The people too learn from you and are gaining faith in your teaching: but for them to believe you entirely, one thing more is needed—you must first persuade us cripples too! Here now you have a fine selection, and truly, an opportunity with more than one forelock to seize! You can heal the blind and make the lame walk; and from the one who has too much behind him you could surely take away a little too:—that, I think, would be the right way to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!”

But Zarathustra replied thus to the one who had spoken: “If you take away the hunchback’s hump, you take away his spirit—so the people teach. And if you give the blind man his eyes, he sees too many bad things on earth: so that he curses the one who healed him. But the one who makes the lame man walk does him the greatest harm: for hardly can he walk when his vices run away with him—so the people teach about cripples. And why should Zarathustra not learn from the people too, when the people learn from Zarathustra?

“But it is the least thing to me, since I have been among human beings, to see: ‘This one lacks an eye and that one an ear and a third a leg, and there are others who have lost their tongue or their nose or their head.’

“I see and have seen worse things, and many so abominable that I would not like to speak of each, and of some I would not even like to keep silent: namely, human beings who lack everything except that they have one thing too much—human beings who are nothing more than a big eye or a big mouth or a big belly or something else big—inverse cripples I call such people.

“And when I came out of my solitude and crossed over this bridge for the first time, I did not trust my eyes and looked, and looked again, and said at last: ‘That is an ear! An ear as big as a human being!’ I looked still more closely: and indeed, under the ear something else was moving that was pitifully small and wretched and slender. And truly, the monstrous ear sat on a little thin stalk—but the stalk was a human being! Whoever put a glass to his eye could even make out a small envious little face as well; and also that a bloated little soul was dangling from the stalk. But the people told me that the big ear was not only a human being but a great human being, a genius. But I never believed the people when they talked about great human beings—and I kept my belief that it was an inverse cripple, who had too little of everything and too much of one thing.”

When Zarathustra had spoken thus to the hunchback and to those whose mouthpiece and advocate the hunchback was, he turned with deep ill humor to his disciples and said:

“Truly, my friends, I walk among human beings as among the fragments and limbs of human beings!

“This is the terrible thing to my eye, that I find the human being smashed and scattered as over a battlefield and a slaughterfield.

“And if my eye flees from the now to the past: it always finds the same: fragments and limbs and dreadful accidents—but no human beings!

“The now and the past on earth—ah! my friends—that is what I find most unbearable; and I would not know how to live if I were not also a seer of what must come.

“A seer, one who wills, one who creates, a future itself and a bridge to the future—and ah, also, as it were, a cripple at this bridge: all this is Zarathustra.

“And you too have often asked yourselves: ‘Who is Zarathustra to us? What shall we call him?’ And like me, you gave yourselves questions for an answer.

“Is he one who promises? Or one who fulfills? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? An autumn? Or a plowshare? A physician? Or one who has been healed?

“Is he a poet? Or a truthful one? A liberator? Or a tamer? A good man? Or an evil one?

“I walk among human beings as among the fragments of the future: that future which I behold.

“And this is all my composing and striving, that I compose into one and bring together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful accident.

“And how could I bear to be a human being if the human being were not also poet and guesser of riddles and the redeemer of accident!

“To redeem those who are past and to re-create every ‘It was’ into a ‘Thus I willed it!’—that alone would I call redemption!

“Will—that is the name of the liberator and bringer of joy: thus I taught you, my friends! But now learn this as well: the will itself is still a prisoner.

“Willing liberates: but what is the name of that which puts even the liberator in chains?

“‘It was’: that is the name of the will’s gnashing of teeth and loneliest gloom. Powerless against what has been done—it is an angry spectator of all that is past.

“The will cannot will backward; that it cannot break time and time’s desire—that is the will’s loneliest gloom.

“Willing liberates: what does willing itself devise to get free of its gloom and to mock its dungeon?

“Ah, every prisoner becomes a fool! Foolishly the imprisoned will redeems itself as well.

“That time does not run backward, that is its wrath; ‘That which was’—such is the name of the stone it cannot roll.

“And so it rolls stones out of wrath and ill humor and takes revenge on whatever does not feel wrath and ill humor as it does.

“Thus the will, the liberator, became a doer of harm: and on everything that can suffer it takes revenge for its being unable to go backward.

“This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will’s ill will against time and its ‘It was.’

“Truly, a great folly dwells in our will; and it has become a curse to all that is human that this folly learned spirit!

“The spirit of revenge: my friends, that has so far been the best reflection of human beings; and wherever there was suffering, there punishment always had to be.

“For ‘punishment’ is what revenge calls itself: with a lying word it feigns a good conscience for itself.

“And because there is suffering in the one who wills, since he cannot will backward—so willing itself and all life were supposed to be—punishment!

“And now cloud upon cloud rolled over the spirit: until at last madness preached: ‘Everything passes away, therefore everything deserves to pass away!’

“‘And this itself is justice, that law of time that it must devour its children’: thus madness preached.

“‘Things are ordered morally according to justice and punishment. Oh, where is redemption from the flux of things and from the punishment called existence?’ Thus madness preached.

“‘Can there be redemption if there is an eternal justice? Ah, the stone “It was” cannot be rolled: eternal too must all punishments be!’ Thus madness preached.

“‘No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by punishment! This, this is what is eternal in the punishment called “existence,” that existence must eternally be deed and guilt again!

“‘Unless the will at last redeemed itself and willing became not-willing—’: but you know, my brothers, this fable-song of madness!

“I led you away from these fable-songs when I taught you: ‘The will is a creator.’

“Every ‘It was’ is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident—until the creating will says to it: ‘But thus I willed it!’

“Until the creating will says to it: ‘But thus I will it! Thus shall I will it!’

“But has it spoken thus yet? And when will this happen? Has the will been unharnessed yet from its own folly?

“Has the will yet become its own redeemer and bringer of joy? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all gnashing of teeth?

“And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than all reconciliation?

“Something higher than all reconciliation must the will will that is the will to power—: but how does this happen to it? Who has taught it to will backward too?”

—But at this point in his speech it happened that Zarathustra suddenly stopped and looked exactly like one who is frightened to the utmost. With frightened eyes he looked at his disciples; his eye pierced their thoughts and the thoughts behind their thoughts as with arrows. But after a little while he was laughing again and said, appeased:

“It is hard to live with human beings, because silence is so hard. Especially for one who is talkative.”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra. But the hunchback had listened to the conversation and covered his face while he did; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up curiously and said slowly:

“But why does Zarathustra speak to us otherwise than to his disciples?”

Zarathustra answered: “What is surprising in that! With hunchbacks one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!”

“Good,” said the hunchback; “and with pupils one may well tell tales out of school.

“But why does Zarathustra speak otherwise to his pupils—than to himself?”—