bullock, which is no ploughing bullock--a furious
bullock, a destroyer, which with angry horns breaketh the ice! The ice
however--BREAKETH GANGWAYS!

O my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX? Have not all
railings and gangways fallen into the water? Who would still HOLD ON to
"good" and "evil"?

"Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind bloweth!"--Thus preach, my
brethren, through all the streets!

9.

There is an old illusion--it is called good and evil. Around soothsayers
and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion.

Once did one BELIEVE in soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE did
one believe, "Everything is fate: thou shalt, for thou must!"

Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers; and
THEREFORE did one believe, "Everything is freedom: thou canst, for thou
willest!"

O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there hath hitherto
been only illusion, and not knowledge; and THEREFORE concerning good and
evil there hath hitherto been only illusion and not knowledge!

10.

"Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay!"--such precepts were once
called holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and take off
one's shoes.

But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in
the world than such holy precepts?

Is there not even in all life--robbing and slaying? And for such
precepts to be called holy, was not TRUTH itself thereby--slain?

--Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and
dissuaded from life?--O my brethren, break up, break up for me the old
tables!

11.

It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,--

--Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every
generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its
bridge!

A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and
disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for
him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing.

This however is the other danger, and mine other sympathy:--he who is
of the populace, his thoughts go back to his grandfather,--with his
grandfather, however, doth time cease.

Thus is all the past abandoned: for it might some day happen for the
populace to become master, and drown all time in shallow waters.

Therefore, O my brethren, a NEW NOBILITY is needed, which shall be the
adversary of all populace and potentate ru