On the Three Evils

1

In a dream, in my last morning dream, I stood today on a promontory—beyond the world; I held a pair of scales and weighed the world.

Oh, that the dawn came to me too early: it glowed me awake, the jealous one! It is always jealous of the glow of my morning dreams.

Measurable for one who has time, weighable for a good weigher, reachable in flight for strong wings, guessable for divine nutcrackers: thus my dream found the world:—

My dream, a bold sailor, half ship, half whirlwind, silent like butterflies, impatient like noble falcons: how did it have patience and leisure today for weighing the world!

Did my wisdom secretly urge it on, perhaps, my laughing, wakeful daytime wisdom, which mocks all “infinite worlds”? For it says: “Where there is force, number too becomes mistress: it has more force.”

How surely my dream looked upon this finite world, not greedy for the new, not greedy for the old, not fearing, not pleading:—

—as if a full apple offered itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple with cool, soft, velvety skin:—so the world offered itself to me:—

—as if a tree beckoned to me, a broad-branched, strong-willed tree, bent to make a backrest and even a footrest for the one weary of the way: so the world stood on my promontory:—

—as if delicate hands carried a shrine toward me—a shrine open to the delight of bashful, adoring eyes: thus the world came toward me today:—

—not riddle enough to scare human love away, not solution enough to put human wisdom to sleep:—a humanly good thing the world was to me today, this world of which so much evil is said!

How I thank my morning dream that I weighed the world like this early today! As a humanly good thing it came to me, this dream and comforter of the heart!

And so that I may do as it did by day, and learn and copy its best from it: I will now put the three most evil things on the scales and weigh them well, in a human way.—

Whoever taught blessing taught cursing too: which are the three best-cursed things in the world? These I will put on the scales.

Lust, lust for power, selfishness: these three have been cursed best until now and have been worst ill-reputed and lied about—these three I will weigh well, in a human way.

Up! Here is my promontory and there the sea: it rolls toward me, shaggy, fawning, the faithful old hundred-headed dog-monster that I love.

Up! Here I will hold the scales over the rolling sea: and I choose a witness too, to look on—you, you hermit tree, you strong-scented, broad-vaulted tree that I love!—

On what bridge does the now go over to the someday? By what compulsion does the high compel itself to the low? And what bids even the highest still—grow upward?—

Now the scales stand level and still: three heavy questions I threw in, three heavy answers the other scale carries.

2

Lust: to all hair-shirted despisers of the body their goad and thorn, and cursed as “the world” by all afterworldly ones: for it mocks and fools all teachers of muddle and error.

Lust: for the riffraff the slow fire on which it is burned; for all worm-eaten wood, all stinking rags, the ready oven of rut and seething.

Lust: for free hearts innocent and free, the garden-happiness of the earth, the overflowing thanks of all the future to the now.

Lust: only for the withered a sweetish poison, but for the lion-willed the great cordial for the heart, and the reverently saved wine of wines.

Lust: the great happiness that is a parable for higher happiness and highest hope. For to many things marriage is promised, and more than marriage—

—to many things that are stranger to each other than man and woman:—and who has fully grasped how strange man and woman are to each other!

Lust:—but I want fences around my thoughts, and around my words too: so that the swine and the fanatics do not break into my gardens!—

Lust for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the hard-hearted; the gruesome torment that saves itself up for the cruelest himself; the dark flame of living pyres.

Lust for power: the malicious gadfly that is set upon the vainest peoples; the mocker of all uncertain virtue; that rides on every horse and every pride.

Lust for power: the earthquake that breaks and breaks open everything rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punishing breaker of whitewashed tombs; the flashing question mark beside premature answers.

Lust for power: before whose glance the human being crawls and stoops and slaves and becomes lower than snake and swine:—until at last the great contempt cries out of him—

Lust for power: the terrible teacher of the great contempt, who preaches to the face of cities and empires: “Away with you!”—until it cries out of themselves: “Away with me!”

Lust for power: which, however, also climbs alluringly up to the pure and the solitary and to self-sufficient heights, glowing like a love that alluringly paints purple blisses on earthly skies.

Lust for power: but who would call it lust when the high longs down for power! Truly, there is nothing sick and lustful in such longing and descending!

That the solitary height may not isolate itself forever and be content with itself; that the mountain may come to the valley and the winds of the height to the lowlands:—

Oh, who would find the right baptismal name and virtue-name for such longing! “Bestowing virtue”—thus Zarathustra once named the unnamable.

And it was then too that it happened—and truly, it happened for the first time!—that his word called selfishness blessed, the whole, healthy selfishness that wells up from a mighty soul:—

—from a mighty soul, to which belongs the lofty body, the beautiful, victorious, refreshing body, around which each and every thing becomes a mirror:

—the supple, persuasive body, the dancer, whose parable and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. The self-joy of such bodies and souls calls itself: “Virtue.”

With its words of good and bad such self-joy fences itself in as with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness it banishes from itself everything contemptible.

Away from itself it banishes everything cowardly; it says: Bad—that is cowardly! Contemptible to it seems the one who always worries, sighs, complains, and whoever picks up even the smallest advantages.

It despises too all woe-besotted wisdom: for truly, there is also a wisdom that blooms in the dark, a nightshade wisdom: which always sighs: “All is vanity!”

Shy mistrust counts for little with it, and everyone who wants oaths instead of glances and hands: and all all-too-mistrustful wisdom too—for that is the way of cowardly souls.

Of still less account to it is the one who is quick to please, the doglike one, who lies on his back at once, the humble one; and there is wisdom too that is humble and doglike and pious and quick to please.

Hateful to it, even disgusting, is the one who never wants to defend himself, who swallows poisonous spittle and evil looks, the all-too-patient one, the endurer of everything, the one content with everything: for that is the servile kind.

Whether someone is servile before gods and divine kicks, or before human beings and stupid human opinions: all servility it spits upon, this blissful selfishness!

Bad: so it calls everything that is broken and stingily servile, unfree blinking eyes, oppressed hearts, and that false, yielding kind that kisses with broad, cowardly lips.

And sham wisdom: so it calls everything that slaves and old men and the weary offer as wit; and especially the whole wicked, witless, overwitty foolishness of priests!

But the sham-wise, all the priests, the world-weary, and whoever has a soul of the womanish and servile kind—oh, how their game has always played selfishness false!

And just this was to be virtue and be called virtue, that one played selfishness false! And “selfless”—that is what all these world-weary cowards and cross spiders wished themselves to be, with good reason!

But for all of them the day is now coming, the transformation, the sword of judgment, the great noon: then much shall be revealed!

And whoever pronounces the I whole and holy and selfishness blessed, truly, he also says what he knows, as one who foretells: “Behold, it is coming, it is near, the great noon!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.