Whether they be servile before gods and divine spurnings, or before men and stupid human opinions: at all kinds of slaves does it spit, this blessed selfishness!
Bad: thus does it call all that is spirit-broken, and sordidly-servile- constrained, blinking eyes, depressed hearts, and the false submissive style, which kisses with broad cowardly lips.
And spurious wisdom: so does it call all the wit that slaves, and hoary-headed and weary ones affect; and especially all the cunning, spurious-witted, curious-witted foolishness of priests!
The spurious wise, however, all the priests, the world-weary, and those whose souls are of feminine and servile nature- oh, how has their game all along abused selfishness!
And precisely that was to be virtue and was to be called virtue- to abuse selfishness! And "selfless"- so did they wish themselves with good reason, all those world-weary cowards and cross-spiders!
But to all those comes now the day, the change, the sword of judgment, the great noontide: then shall many things be revealed!
And he who proclaims the ego wholesome and sacred, and selfishness blessed, verily, he, the prognosticator, speaks also what he knows: "Behold, it comes, it is night, the great noontide!"
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
