LIGHTNINGS.--

Unto these men of to-day will I not be LIGHT, nor be called light.
THEM--will I blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!

8.

Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad falseness in
those who will beyond their power.

Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in
great things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-players:--

--Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-eyed, whited
cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade virtues and brilliant
false deeds.

Take good care there, ye higher men! For nothing is more precious to me,
and rarer, than honesty.

Is this to-day not that of the populace? The populace however knoweth
not what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is
honest: it is innocently crooked, it ever lieth.

9.

Have a good distrust to-day ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones! Ye
open-hearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this to-day is that
of the populace.

What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could--
refute it to them by means of reasons?

And on the market-place one convinceth with gestures. But reasons make
the populace distrustful.

And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good
distrust: "What strong error hath fought for it?"

Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you, because they
are unproductive! They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird
is unplumed.

Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far
from being love to truth. Be on your guard!

Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! Refrigerated
spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth
is.

10.

If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves
CARRIED aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!

Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback? Thou now ridest briskly up
to thy goal? Well, my friend! But thy lame foot is also with thee on
horseback!

When thou reachest thy goal, when thou alightest from thy horse:
precisely on thy HEIGHT, thou higher man,--then wilt thou stumble!

11.

Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one's own
child.

Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOUR
neighbour? Even if ye act "for your neighbour"--ye still do not create
for him!

Unlearn, I pray you, this "