78. The Ass Festival
1.
AT THIS place in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer control himself; he himself cried out you-A, louder even than the ass, and sprang into the midst of his maddened guests. "Whatever are you about, you grown-up children?" he exclaimed, pulling up the praying ones from the ground. "Alas, if any one else, except Zarathustra, had seen you:
Every one would think you the worst blasphemers, or the very most foolish old women, with your new belief!
And you yourself, you old pope, how is it in accordance with you, to adore an ass in such a manner as God?"-
"O Zarathustra," answered the pope, "forgive me, but in divine matters I am more enlightened even than you. And it is right that it should be so.
Better to adore God so, in this form, than in no form at all! Think over this saying, my exalted friend: you will readily divine that in such a saying there is wisdom.
He who said 'God is a Spirit'- made the greatest stride and slide hitherto made on earth towards unbelief: such a dictum is not easily amended again on earth!
My old heart leaps and bounds because there is still something to adore on earth. Forgive it, O Zarathustra, to an old, pious pontiff-heart!-"
-"And you," said Zarathustra to the wanderer and shadow, "you call and think yourself a free spirit? And you here practice such idolatry and hierolatry?
