The Voluntary Beggar
When Zarathustra had left the ugliest human being, he felt cold and lonely: for much that was cold and lonely passed through his mind, so that his limbs too grew colder because of it. But as he climbed on and on, up, down, now past green pastures, but also over wild stony beds where formerly, no doubt, an impatient brook had laid itself to rest—all at once he felt warmer and more cheerful at heart again.
“What has happened to me?” he asked himself. “Something warm and living is reviving me; it must be near me.
“Already I am less alone; unknown companions and brothers roam about me, their warm breath touches my soul.”
But when he peered about him and looked for the comforters of his loneliness: behold, they were cows, standing together on a rise; their nearness and smell had warmed his heart. These cows, however, seemed to be listening eagerly to someone speaking and paid no attention to the one who was approaching. But when Zarathustra was quite close to them, he clearly heard a human voice speaking from the midst of the cows; and evidently they had all turned their heads toward the speaker.
Then Zarathustra eagerly sprang up and pushed the animals apart, for he feared that some harm had befallen someone here, which the pity of cows could hardly remedy. But in this he had been mistaken; for behold, there sat a human being on the ground and seemed to be urging the animals to have no fear of him, a peaceable human being and preacher on the mount, out of whose eyes goodness itself preached. “What are you looking for here?” cried Zarathustra in surprise.
“What am I looking for here?” he answered. “The same thing you are looking for, you troublemaker! Namely, happiness on earth.
“But for that I would like to learn from these cows. For, you know, I have been talking to them for half a morning already, and they were just about to give me an answer. Why do you disturb them?
“Unless we turn back and become like the cows, we shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.1 For there is one thing we should learn from them: chewing the cud.
“And truly, if a human being should gain the whole world and not learn this one thing, chewing the cud: what would it profit him! He would not be rid of his gloom
“—his great gloom: but today that is called disgust. Who today does not have heart, mouth, and eyes full of disgust? You too! You too! But just look at these cows!”—
Thus spoke the preacher on the mount, and then turned his own gaze toward Zarathustra,—for until then it had hung lovingly on the cows—: but then he was transformed. “Who is this I am talking with?” he cried in alarm, and sprang up from the ground.
“This is the human being without disgust, this is Zarathustra himself, the overcomer of the great disgust, this is the eye, this is the mouth, this is the heart of Zarathustra himself.”
And as he spoke thus, he kissed the hands of the one he was speaking to, his eyes overflowing, and behaved altogether like one to whom a precious gift and jewel falls unexpectedly from heaven. But the cows watched all this and wondered.
“Do not speak of me, you strange one! you lovely one!” said Zarathustra, warding off his tenderness. “Speak to me first of yourself! Are you not the voluntary beggar who once threw away a great fortune,—
“—who was ashamed of his wealth and of the rich, and fled to the poorest to give them his abundance and his heart? But they did not accept him.”
“But they did not accept me,” said the voluntary beggar, “you know it already. So at last I went to the animals and to these cows.”
“There you learned,” Zarathustra interrupted the speaker, “how it is harder to give rightly than to take rightly, and that giving well is an art, and the last, most cunning master art of goodness.”
“Especially nowadays,” answered the voluntary beggar, “today, that is, when everything low has become rebellious and shy and arrogant in its own way: namely in the rabble’s way.
“For the hour has come, you know it already, for the great, wicked, long, slow uprising of the rabble and the slaves: it grows and grows!
“Now every kindness and little giving away outrages the lowly; and the overrich had better be on their guard!
“Whoever today trickles like potbellied bottles from all-too-narrow necks:—today people like to break the necks of such bottles.
“Lecherous greed, bilious envy, sullen vengefulness, rabble pride: all that leapt into my face. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. But the kingdom of heaven is with the cows.”
And why is it not with the rich? asked Zarathustra, tempting him, while he warded off the cows, which were trustingly snuffling at the peaceable one.
“Why do you tempt me?” the latter answered. “You know it yourself even better than I. What was it that drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra? Was it not disgust at our richest?
“—at the convicts of wealth, who pick their advantage out of every rubbish heap, with cold eyes and lewd thoughts, at this riffraff that stinks to high heaven,
“—at this gilded, falsified rabble whose fathers were pickpockets or carrion birds or ragpickers, with wives compliant, lustful, forgetful:—for none of them is far from being a whore—
“Rabble above, rabble below! What do ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ mean today! This difference I unlearned,—then I fled away, farther, ever farther, until I came to these cows.”
Thus spoke the peaceable one, and snuffled himself and sweated at his words: so that the cows wondered anew. But Zarathustra kept looking into his face with a smile as he spoke so harshly, and silently shook his head.
“You do violence to yourself, you preacher on the mount, when you use such hard words. Your mouth did not grow for such hardness, nor your eye.
“Nor, it seems to me, your stomach itself: it is revolted by all such raging and hating and foaming over. Your stomach wants gentler things: you are no butcher.
“Rather, you seem to me a plant eater and a root man. Perhaps you grind grains. But certainly you are averse to fleshly joys and love honey.”
“You have guessed me well,” answered the voluntary beggar, his heart relieved. “I love honey, I grind grains too, for I sought what tastes sweet and makes for pure breath:
“—also what takes a long time, a day’s work and a mouth’s work for gentle idlers and loafers.
“Furthest of all, to be sure, these cows have come: they invented chewing the cud and lying in the sun. They also abstain from all heavy thoughts, which bloat the heart.”
“—Well then!” said Zarathustra. “You should also see my animals, my eagle and my serpent,—their like does not exist on earth today.
“Look, that way leads the path to my cave: be their guest tonight. And talk with my animals about the happiness of animals,—
“—until I myself come home. For now a cry of distress calls me away from you in haste. You will also find new honey with me, ice-fresh golden honey from the comb: eat it!
“But now take leave of your cows at once, you strange one! you lovely one! though it may be hard for you. For they are your warmest friends and teachers!”—
“—Except for one whom I love even more,” answered the voluntary beggar. “You yourself are good, and better even than a cow, O Zarathustra!”
“Away, away with you! you wicked flatterer!” cried Zarathustra with malice. “Why do you spoil me with such praise and flattery’s honey?”
“Away, away from me!” he cried once more, and swung his stick at the tender beggar: but the beggar ran off nimbly.
Notes
1. Matthew 18:3.