OF THE VISION AND THE RIDDLE 223
(For ye care not to grope after a thread, with a coward's hand ; and where ye are able to guess ye hate to determine by argument?)
Unto you alone I tell this riddle which I saw the vision of the loneliest one.
Mournfully I went of late through a corpse-col- oured dawn, mournfully and hard with my lips pressed together. Not only one sun had gone down for me.
A path ascending defiantly through the boulder- stones ; a wicked, lonely path unto which neither herb nor bushes spake; a mountain-path gnashed its teeth under the scorn of my foot.
Striding silently over the scornful rattling of pebbles, crushing with its step the stone that made it slip, thus my foot forced its way upwards.
Upwards in defiance of the spirit drawing it down- wards, into the abyss the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch-enemy.
Upwards although that spirit sat upon me, half a dwarf, half a mole ; lame ; laming ; dropping lead through mine ear, thoughts as heavy as drops of lead into my brain.
' O Zarathustra,' it whispered scornfully pronouncing syllable by syllable. 'Thou stone of wisdom! Thou threwest thyself high up, but every stone thrown must -fall!
O Zarathustra, thou stone of wisdom, thou sling-
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