s and traders, and kings, and other
landkeepers and shopkeepers.

Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so,--but only waiting for
MYSELF. And above all did I learn standing and walking and running and
leaping and climbing and dancing.

This however is my teaching: he who wisheth one day to fly, must first
learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:--one
doth not fly into flying!

With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did
I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no
small bliss;--

--To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly,
but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-wrecked ones!

By divers ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder
did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness.

And unwillingly only did I ask my way--that was always counter to my
taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves.

A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:--and verily,
one must also LEARN to answer such questioning! That, however,--is my
taste:

--Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no
longer either shame or secrecy.

"This--is now MY way,--where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who
asked me "the way." For THE way--it doth not exist!

Thus spake Zarathustra.

LVI. OLD AND NEW TABLES.

1.

Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new
half-written tables. When cometh mine hour?

--The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto
men.

For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that
it is MINE hour--namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one telleth me
anything new, so I tell myself mine own story.

2.

When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation:
all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.

An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and
he who wished to sleep well spake of "good" and "bad" ere retiring to
rest.

This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what
is good and bad:--unless it be the creating one!

--It is he, however, who createth man's goal, and giveth to the earth
its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or
bad.

And I b