The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me
passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my justice! I do not see that I am
fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!"

The hour when we say: "What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on
which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion."

Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had
heard you crying thus!

It is not your sin--it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven;
your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy
with which ye should be inoculated?

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!--

When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out: "We have
now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see him!"
And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the rope-dancer, who
thought the words applied to him, began his performance.

4.

Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spake
thus: