Now rages my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone fly the fragments: what's that to me?
I will complete it: for a shadow came to me- the still and lightest of all things once came to me!
The beauty of the Superman came to me as a shadow. Ah, my brothers! Of what account now are- the gods to me!-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
25. The Pitiful
MY FRIENDS, there has arisen a satire on your friend: "Behold Zarathustra! Walks he not amongst us as if amongst animals?"
But it is better said in this wise: "The discerning one walks amongst men as amongst animals."
Man himself is to the discerning one: the animal with red cheeks.
How has that happened to him? Is it not because he has had to be ashamed too oft?
O my friends! Thus speaks the discerning one: shame, shame, shame- that is the history of man!
And on that account does the noble one enjoin on himself not to abash: bashfulness does he enjoin himself in presence of all sufferers.
I like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their pity: too destitute are they of bashfulness.
If I must be pitiful, I dislike to be called so; and if I be so, it is preferably at a distance.
