r
of whited sepulchres; the flashing interrogative-sign beside premature
answers.

Passion for power: before whose glance man creepeth and croucheth and
drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent and the swine:--until at
last great contempt crieth out of him--,

Passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which
preacheth to their face to cities and empires: "Away with thee!"--until
a voice crieth out of themselves: "Away with ME!"

Passion for power: which, however, mounteth alluringly even to the pure
and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied elevations, glowing like a love
that painteth purple felicities alluringly on earthly heavens.

Passion for power: but who would call it PASSION, when the height
longeth to stoop for power! Verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in
such longing and descending!

That the lonesome height may not for ever remain lonesome and
self-sufficing; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds
of the heights to the plains:--

Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name for such
longing! "Bestowing virtue"--thus did Zarathustra once name the
unnamable.

And then it happened also,--and verily, it happened for the first
time!--that his word blessed SELFISHNESS, the wholesome, healthy
selfishness, that springeth from the powerful soul:--

--From the powerful soul, to which the high body appertaineth, the
handsome, triumphing, refreshing body, around which everything becometh
a mirror:

--The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome
is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment
calleth itself "virtue."

With its words of good and bad doth such self-enjoyment shelter itself
as with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness doth it banish
from itself everything contemptible.

Away from itself doth it banish everything cowardly; it saith:
"Bad--THAT IS cowardly!" Contemptible seem to it the ever-solicitous,
the sighing, the complaining, and whoever pick up the most trifling
advantage.

It despiseth also all bitter-sweet wisdom: for verily, there is also
wisdom that bloometh in the dark, a night-shade wisdom, which ever
sigheth: "All is vain!"

Shy distrust is regarded by it as base, and every one who wanteth oaths
instead of looks and hands: also all over-distrustful wisdom,--for such
is the mode of cowardly souls.

Baser still it regardeth the obsequious, doggish one, who immediately
li