Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/227

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yearningly-long for me in vain, and for my trumpet-notes and herald-calls?

-Ah! Ever are there but few of those whose hearts have persistent courage and exuberance; and in such remains also the spirit patient. The rest, however, are cowardly.

The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the superfluous, the all-too-many- those all are cowardly!-

Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type meet on the way: so that his first companions must be corpses and fools.

His second companions, however- they will call themselves his believers,- will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much unbearded veneration.

To those believers shall he who is of my type among men not bind his heart; in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe, who knows the fickly faint-hearted human species!

Could they do otherwise, then would they also will otherwise. The half-and-half spoil every whole. That leaves become withered,- what is there to lament about that!

Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not lament! Better even to blow amongst them with rustling winds,-

-Blow amongst those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything withered may run away from you the faster!-


2.

"We have again become pious"- so do those apostates confess; and some of them are still too pusillanimous thus to confess.