of the way of the creator

from thus spoke zarathustra by friedrich nietzsche

my brother, do you want to go apart and be alone?  do you want to seek the way to yourself?  pause just a moment and listen to me.
     'he who seeks may easily get lost himself.  it is a crime to go apart and be alone' - thus speaks the herd.
     the voice of the herd will still ring within you.  and when you say: 'we have no longer the same conscience, you and i', it will be a lament and a grief.
     for see, it is still this same conscience that causes your grief: and the last glimmer of this conscience still glows in your affliction.
     but you want to go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself?  if so, show me your strength for it and your right to it!
     are you a new strength and a new right?   a first motion?  a self-propelling wheel?  can you also compel stars to revolve about you?
     alas, there is so much lusting for eminence!  there is so much convulsion of the ambitious!  show me that you are not one of the lustful or ambitious!
     alas, there are so many great ideas that do no more than a bellows: they inflate and make emptier.
     do you call yourself free?  i want to hear your ruling idea, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.
     are you such a man as ought to escape a yoke?  there are many who threw off their final worth when they threw off their bondage.
     free from what?  zarathustra does not care about that!  but your eye should clearly tell me: free for what?
     can you furnish yourself with your own good and evil and hang up your own will above yourself as a law?  can you be judge of yourself and avenger of your law?
     it is terrible to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law.  it is to be like a star thrown forth into empty space and into the icy breath of solitude.
     today you still suffer from the many, o man set apart: today you still have your courage whole and your hopes.
     but one day solitude will make you weary, one day your pride will bend and your courage break.  one day you will cry: 'i am alone!'
     one day you will no longer see what is exalted in you; and what is base in you, you will see all too closely; your sublimity itself will make you afraid, as if it were a phantom.  one day you will cry: 'everything is false!'
     there are emotions that seek to kill the solitary; if they do not succeed, well, they must die themselves!  but are you capable of being a murderer?
     my brother, have you ever known the word 'contempt'?  and the anguish of your justice in being just to those who despise you?
     you compel many to change their opinion about you; they hold that very much against you.  you approached them and yet went on past them: that they will never forgive you.
     you go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy.  and he who flies is hated most of all.
     'how could you be just towards me?' - that is how you must speak - 'i choose your injustice as my portion.'
     they throw injustice and dirt at the solitary: but, my brother, if you want to be a star, you must shine none the less brightly for them on that account!
     and be on your guard against the good and just!  they would like to crucify those who devise their own virtue - they hate the solitary.
     be on your guard, too, against holy simplicity!  everything which is not simple is unholy to it: and it, too, likes to play with fire - in this case, the fire of the stake.
     and be on your guard, too, against the assaults your love makes upon you!  the solitary extends his hand too quickly to anyone he meets.
     to many men, you ought not to give you hand, but only your paw: and i should like it if your paw had claws, too.
     but you yourself will always be the worst enemy you can encounter; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests.
     solitary man, you are going the way to yourself!  and your way leads past yourself and your seven devils!
     you will be a heretic to yourself and a witch and a prophet and an evil-doer and a villian.
     you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
     solitary man, you are going the way of the creator: you want to create yourself a god from your seven devils!
     solitary man, you are going the way of the lover: you love yourself and for that reason you despise yourself as only lovers can despise.
     the lover wants to create, because he despises!  what does he know of love who has not had to despise precisely what he loved?
     go apart and be alone with your love and your creating, my brother; and justice will be slow to limp after you.
     go apart and be alone with my tears, my brother.  i love him who wants to create beyond himself, and thus perishes.

     thus spoke zarathustra.