Hath not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted ones? And he who persecuteth well learneth readily to be obsequent, when once he is—put behind! But it is their pity—

Their pity is it from which I flee away and flee to thee. O Zarathustra, protect me, thou my last refuge, thou sole one who divinedst me—

Thou hast divined how the man feeleth who killed him. Stay! And if thou wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way that I came. Thatway is bad.

Art thou angry with me because I have already racked language too long? Because I have already counselled thee? But know that it is I, the ugliest man—

Who have also the largest, heaviest feet. Where I have gone, the way is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction.

But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst—I saw it well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra.

Every one else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity, in look and speech. But for that—I am not beggar enough: that didst thou divine.

For that I am too rich, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most unutterable! Thy shame, O Zarathustra, honoured me!

With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful, that I might find the only one who at present teacheth that ‘pity is obtrusive’—thyself, O Zarathustra!

Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the virtue that rusheth to do so.

That however—namely, pity—is called virtue itself at present by all petty people; they have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.

Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people.

As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and souls.

Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: so we have at last given them power as well—and now do they teach that ‘good is only what petty people call good’.

And ‘truth’ is at present what the preacher spake who himself sprang from them, that singular saint and advocate of the petty people, who testified of himself: ‘I—am the truth.’

That immodest one hath long made the petty people greatly puffed up, he who taught no small error when he taught: ‘I—am the truth.’

Hath an immodest one ever been answered more courteously? Thou, however, O Zarathustra, passedst him by, and saidst: ‘Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!’

Thou warnedst against his error; thou warnedst—the first to do so—against pity: not every one, not none, but thyself and thy type.

Thou art ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and verily when thou sayest: ‘From pity there cometh a heavy cloud; take heed, ye men!’