Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale Page A

invisible hands that torment and bend us the worst.’
    At that the young man stood up in confusion and said: ‘I hear Zarathustra and I was just thinking of him.’
    Zarathustra replied: ‘Why are you alarmed on that account? – Now it is with men as with this tree.
    ‘The more it wants to rise into the heights and the light, the more determinedly do its roots strive earthwards, downwards, into the darkness, into the depths – into evil.’
    ‘Yes, into evil!’ cried the young man. ‘How is it possible you can uncover my soul?’
    Zarathustra smiled and said: ‘There are many souls one will never uncover, unless one invents them first.’
    ‘Yes, into evill’ cried the young man again.
    ‘You have spoken the truth, Zarathustra. Since I wanted to rise into the heights I have no longer trusted myself, and no one trusts me any more. How did this happen?
    ‘I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that.
    ‘When I am aloft, I always find myself alone. No onespeaks to me, the frost of solitude makes me tremble. What do I want in the heights?
    ‘My contempt and my desire increase together; the higher I climb, the more do I despise him who climbs. What do I want in the heights?
    ‘How ashamed I am of my climbing and stumbling! How I scorn my violent panting! How I hate the man who can fly! How weary I am in the heights!’
    Here the young man fell silent. And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside which they were standing, and spoke thus:
    ‘This tree stands here alone on the mountainside; it has grown up high above man and animal.
    ‘And if it wished to speak, it would find no one who understood it: so high has it grown.
    ‘Now it waits and waits – yet what is it waiting for? It lives too near the seat of the clouds: is it waiting, perhaps, for the first lightning?’
    When Zarathustra said this, the young man cried with violent gestures: ‘Yes, Zarathustra, you speak true. I desired my destruction when I wanted to ascend into the heights, and you are the lightning for which I have been waiting! Behold, what have I been since you appeared among us? It is envy of you which has destroyed me!’ Thus spoke the young man and wept bitterly. But Zarathustra kid his arm about him and drew him along with him.
    And when they had been walking together for a while, Zarathustra began to speak thus:
    It breaks my heart. Better than your words, your eye tells me all your peril.
    You are not yet free, you still search for freedom. Your search has fatigued you and made you too wakeful.
    You long for the open heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your bad instincts too thirst for freedom.
    Your fierce dogs long for freedom; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit aspires to break open all prisons.
    To me you are still a prisoner who imagines freedom: ah,such prisoners of the soul become clever, but also deceitful and base.
    The free man of the spirit, too, must still purify himself. Much of the prison and rottenness still remain within him: his eye still has to become pure.
    Yes, I know your peril. But, by my love and hope I entreat you: do not reject your love and hope!
    You still feel yourself noble, and the others, too, who dislike you and cast evil glances at you, still feel you are noble. Learn that everyone finds the noble man an obstruction.
    The good, too, find the noble man an obstruction: and even when they call him a good man they do so in order to make away with him.
    The noble man wants to create new things and a new virtue. The good man wants the old things and that the old things shall be preserved.
    But that is not the danger for the noble man – that he may become a good man – but that he may become an impudent one, a derider, a destroyer.
    Alas, I have known noble men who lost their highest hope. And henceforth they slandered all high hopes.
    Henceforth they lived impudently in brief pleasures, and they had