The Ugliest Human Being

—And again Zarathustra’s feet ran through mountains and forests, and his eyes searched and searched, but nowhere was the one to be seen whom they wanted to see, the one in great distress, crying out in distress. But the whole way he rejoiced in his heart and was grateful. “What good things this day has given me,” he said, “to make up for its bad beginning! What strange people I found to talk with!

“On their words I will now chew for a long time as on good grains; my teeth shall grind and crush them small until they flow into my soul like milk!”—

But when the path again bent around a rock, all at once the landscape changed, and Zarathustra stepped into a kingdom of death. Here black and red cliffs jutted up: no grass, no tree, no bird’s voice. For it was a valley that all animals avoided, even the beasts of prey—, except that ugly, thick, green serpents of a certain kind came here to die when they grew old. That is why the shepherds called this valley: Serpents’ Death.

But Zarathustra sank into a black memory, for it seemed to him as if he had stood in this valley once before. And much that was heavy settled over his mind: so that he walked slowly and ever more slowly and at last stood still. But then, when he opened his eyes, he saw something sitting by the path, shaped like a human being and hardly like a human being, something unspeakable. And at one stroke the great shame came over Zarathustra at having looked at such a thing with his eyes: blushing up to his white hair, he turned his gaze away and raised his foot to leave this evil place. But then the dead wasteland grew loud: for up from the ground came a gurgling and rattling, the way water gurgles and rattles at night through clogged water pipes; and at last it became a human voice and human speech:—which went like this.

“Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Guess my riddle! Speak, speak! What is the revenge on the witness?

“I lure you back, here is slippery ice! See to it, see to it that your pride does not break its legs here!

“You think yourself wise, you proud Zarathustra! Then guess the riddle, you hard nutcracker,—the riddle that I am! Speak, then—who am I!”

—But when Zarathustra had heard these words,—what do you suppose happened then to his soul? Pity overcame him; and all at once he sank down, like an oak that has long withstood many woodcutters,—heavily, suddenly, to the terror even of those who wanted to fell it. But already he stood up from the ground again, and his face became hard.

“I recognize you well,” he said in a voice of bronze: “you are the murderer of God! Let me go.

“You could not bear the one who saw you,—who always saw you through and through, you ugliest human being! You took revenge on this witness!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra and wanted to leave; but the unspeakable one grabbed at a corner of his garment and began anew to gurgle and search for words. “Stay!” he said at last—

—“stay! Do not pass by! I guessed what ax struck you to the ground: hail to you, O Zarathustra, that you are standing again!

“You guessed, I know it well, how the one who killed him feels,—the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here with me, it is not for nothing.

“To whom would I go, if not to you? Stay, sit down! But do not look at me! Honor in this way—my ugliness!

“They are persecuting me: now you are my last refuge. Not with their hatred, not with their bailiffs:—oh, such persecution I would mock, and be proud and glad!

“Has not all success so far been with the well-pursued? And whoever pursues well easily learns to follow:—for he is, after all,—behind! But it is their pity—

“—it is their pity I am fleeing from, fleeing to you. O Zarathustra, protect me, you my last refuge, you the only one who guessed me:

“—you guessed how the one who killed him feels. Stay! And if you want to go, you impatient one: do not go the way I came. That way is bad.

“Are you angry with me that I have been talking and mangling words too long already? That I am already advising you? But know that it is I, the ugliest human being,

“—who also has the biggest, heaviest feet. Where I have walked, the path is bad. I trample all paths to death and to ruin.

“But that you passed me by, in silence; that you blushed, I saw it well: by that I recognized you as Zarathustra.

“Anyone else would have tossed me his alms, his pity, with look and speech. But for that—I am not beggar enough, that you guessed—

“—for that I am too rich, rich in what is great, in what is terrible, in what is ugliest, in what is most unspeakable! Your shame, O Zarathustra, honored me!

“With difficulty I got out of the throng of the pitying,—so that I might find the only one who today teaches, ‘Pity is intrusive’—you, O Zarathustra!

“—whether it be a god’s pity or human pity: pity goes against shame. And not wanting to help can be nobler than that virtue which leaps to help.

“But that is what is called virtue itself today among all little people, pity:—they have no reverence for great misfortune, for great ugliness, for great failure.

“Over all these I look away, as a dog looks away over the backs of teeming flocks of sheep. They are little, well-meaning, well-willing gray people.

“As a heron looks away in contempt over shallow ponds, with its head thrown back: so I look away over the swarm of gray little waves and wills and souls.

“Too long people have conceded that they are right, these little people: so in the end power too was conceded to them—now they teach: ‘Good is only what little people call good.’

“And ‘truth’ today is what the preacher said who himself came from among them, that strange saint and advocate of the little people who testified of himself: ‘I—am the truth.’

“This immodest one has long been making the little people’s crests swell high—he who taught no small error when he taught, ‘I—am the truth.’

“Was an immodest one ever answered more politely?—But you, O Zarathustra, passed him by and said: ‘No! No! Three times No!’

“You warned against his error, you were the first to warn against pity—not all, not none, but yourself and your kind.

“You are ashamed at the shame of the great sufferer; and truly, when you say, ‘From pity a great cloud is coming, take heed, you human beings!’

“—when you teach, ‘All creators are hard, all great love is above its pity’: O Zarathustra, how well trained you seem to me in weather signs!

“But you yourself—warn yourself too against your pity! For many are on their way to you, many who suffer, who doubt, who despair, who are drowning, who are freezing—

“I warn you against myself as well. You guessed my best, worst riddle, myself and what I did. I know the ax that fells you.

“But he—had to die: he saw with eyes that saw everything,—he saw the human being’s depths and grounds, all his concealed disgrace and ugliness.

“His pity knew no shame: he crawled into my dirtiest corners. This most curious, over-intrusive, over-pitying one had to die.

“He always saw me: on such a witness I wanted to have revenge—or not live myself.

“The God who saw everything, even the human being: this God had to die! The human being cannot bear that such a witness should live.”

Thus spoke the ugliest human being. But Zarathustra rose and made ready to leave: for he was chilled to his very entrails.

“You unspeakable one,” he said, “you warned me against your path. To thank you for it, I commend mine to you. Look, up there lies Zarathustra’s cave.

“My cave is large and deep and has many corners; there the most hidden one finds his hiding place. And close by it are a hundred holes and hidden paths for creeping, fluttering, and leaping creatures.

“You outcast who cast yourself out, you do not want to live among human beings and human pity? Well then, do as I do! So you will learn from me too; only the doer learns.

“And speak first and foremost with my animals! The proudest animal and the cleverest animal—they may well be the right counselors for us both!”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra and went his way, more thoughtful and slower still than before: for he asked himself many things and did not easily know how to answer himself.

“How poor the human being is, after all!” he thought in his heart. “How ugly, how wheezing, how full of hidden shame!

“I am told that the human being loves himself: alas, how great this self-love must be! How much contempt it has against it!

“This one too loved himself as he despised himself,—to me he is a great lover and a great despiser.

“No one have I yet found who despised himself more deeply: that too is height. Woe, was that one perhaps the higher human whose cry I heard?

“I love the great despisers. But the human being is something that must be overcome.”—