Thus Spoke Zarathustra: The Tarantulas
Lo, this is the tarantula's den! Would'st thou see the tarantula itself?
Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble.
There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy
back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul.
Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab;
with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!
Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye
preachers of EQUALITY! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful
ones!
But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I
laugh in your face my laughter of the height.
Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your
den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word
"justice."
Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE--that is for me the bridge to
the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be very justice
for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance"--thus do they
talk to one another.
"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us"--thus
do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.
"And 'Will to Equality'--that itself shall henceforth be the name of
virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!"
Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you
for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus
in virtue-words!
Fretted conceit and suppressed envy--perhaps your fathers' conceit and
envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.
What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the
son the father's revealed secret.
Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth them--
but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but
envy, that maketh them so.
Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and this is the sign
of their jealousy--they always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at
last to go to sleep on the snow.
In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is
maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to
punish is powerful!
They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the
hangman and the sleuth-hound.
Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls
not only honey is lacking.
And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for
them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but--power!
My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time
preachers of equality, and tarantulas.
That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these
poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life--is because they would thereby do
injury.
To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for with
those the preaching of death is still most at home.
Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they
themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.
With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded.
For thus speaketh justice UNTO ME: "Men are not equal."
And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman,
if I spake otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always
shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my great love
make me speak!
Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and
with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the
supreme fight!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of
values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again
and again surpass itself!
Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs--life itself: into
remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties--
THEREFORE doth it require elevation!
And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and
variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to
surpass itself.
And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula's den is, riseth
aloft an ancient temple's ruins--just behold it with enlightened eyes!
Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as
the wisest ones about the secret of life!
That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and
supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.
How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with
light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving
ones.--
Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends!
Divinely will we strive AGAINST one another!--
Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely
steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger!
"Punishment must there be, and justice"--so thinketh it: "not gratuitously
shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!"
Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also
dizzy with revenge!
That I may NOT turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this
pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance!
Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he
is not at all a tarantula-dancer!--
Thus spake Zarathustra. [ More ]
On The Genealogy of Morals: I.14
Would anyone like to take a look into the secret of how ideals are made on earth? Who has the courage?— Very well! Here is a point we can see through into this dark workshop. But wait a moment or two, Mr. Rash and Curious: your eyes must first get used to this false iridescent light.— All right! Now speak! What is going on down there? Say what you see, man of the most perilous kind of inquisitiveness—now I am the one who is listening.—
—"I see nothing but I hear the more. There is a soft, wary, malignant muttering and whispering coming from all the corners and nooks. It seems to me one is lying; a saccharine sweetness clings to every sound. Weakness is being lied into something meritorious, no doubt of it—so it is just as you said"—
—Go on!
—"and impotence which does not requite into 'goodness of heart'; anxious lowliness into 'humility'; subjection to those one hates into 'obedience' (that is, to one of whom they say he commands this subjection—they call him God). The inoffensiveness of the weak man, even the cowardice of which he has so much, his lingering at the door, his being ineluctably compelled to wait, here acquire flattering names, such as 'patience,' and are even called virtue itself; his inability for revenge is called unwillingness to revenge, perhaps even forgiveness ('for they know not what they do—we alone know what they do!'). They also speak of 'loving one's enemies'—and sweat as they do so."
—Go on!
—"They are miserable, no doubt of it, all these mutterers and nook counterfeiters, although they crouch warmly together—but they tell me their misery is a sign of being chosen by God; one beats the dog one likes best; perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a testing, a schooling, perhaps it is even more—something that will one day be made good and recompensed with interest, with huge payments of gold, no! of happiness. This they call 'bliss.'"
—Go on!
—"Now they give me to understand that they are not merely better than the mighty, the lords of the earth whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God has commanded them to obey the authorities) —that they are not merely better but are also 'better off,' or at least will be better off someday. But enough! enough! I can't take any more. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are manufactured—it seems to me it stinks of so many lies."
—"No! Wait a moment! You have said nothing yet of the masterpiece of these black magicians, who make whiteness, milk, and innocence of every blackness—haven't you noticed their perfection if refinement, their boldest, subtlest, most ingenious, most mendacious artistic stroke? Attend to them! These cellar rodents full of vengefulness and hatred—what have they made of revenge and hatred? Have you heard these words uttered? If you trusted simply to their words, would you suspect you were among men of ressentiment? . . .
—"I understand; I'll open my ears again (oh! oh! oh! and cover my nose). Now I can really hear what they have been saying all along: 'We good men—we are the just'—what they desire they call, not retaliation, but 'the triumph of justice'; what they hate is not their enemy, no! they hate 'injustice,' they hate 'godlessness'; what they believe in and hope for is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication of sweet revenge (—'sweeter than honey' Homer called it), but the victory of God, of the just God, over the godless; what there is left for them to love on earth is not their brothers in hatred but their 'brothers in love,' as they put it, all the good and just on earth."
—And what do they call that which serves to console them for all the suffering of life—their phantasmagoria of anticipated future bliss?
—"What? Do I hear aright? They call that 'the Last Judgment,' the coming of their kingdom, of the 'Kingdom of God'—meanwhile, however, they live 'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'"
—Enough! Enough! [ More ]
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"That man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the
bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long
storms."--Thus Spoke Zarathustra