17. The Way of the Creating One
Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me.
"He who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong": so say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd.
The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when thou sayest, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint and a pain.
Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction.
But thou wouldst go the way of your affliction, which is the way unto thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so!
Are you a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel the stars to revolve around thee?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou are not a lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.
Free, do you call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
Art thou one entitled to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.
