Peace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep. And
peace also with thy neighbour's devil! Otherwise it will haunt thee in
the night.

  Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked
government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power liketh
to walk on crooked legs?

  He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be
for me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep.

  Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the
spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little
treasure.

  A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they
must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep.

  Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep.
Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them.

  Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take
I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned- sleep,
the lord of the virtues!

  But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus
ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten
overcomings?

  And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the
ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?

  Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me
all at once- sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.

  Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my
mouth, and it remaineth open.

  Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves,
and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this
academic chair.

  But not much longer do I then stand: I already lie.-

  When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his
heart: for thereby had a light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to
his heart:

  A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I
believe he knoweth well how to sleep.

  Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep is
contagious- even through a thick wall it is contagious.

  A magic resideth even in his academic chair. And not in vain did the
youths sit before the preacher of virtue.

  His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And verily, if
life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the
desirablest nonsense for me also.

  Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they
sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves,
and poppy-head virtues to promote it!

  To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep
without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life.

  Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of
virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is past. And
not much longer do they stand: there they already lie.

  Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.-

  Thus spake Zarathustra.

                    3. Backworldsmen

  ONCE on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all
backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world
then seem to me.

  The dream- and diction- of a God, did the world then seem to me;
coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.

  Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou- coloured vapours did
they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look
away from himself,- thereupon he created the world.

  Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his
suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting,
did the world once seem to me.

  This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's
image and imperfect image- an intoxicating joy to its imperfect
creator:- thus did the world once seem to me.

  Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like
all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?