danceth a God in me.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


VIII. THE TREE ON THE HILL.

Zarathustra's eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as
he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called "The
Pied Cow," behold, there found he the youth sitting leaning against a tree,
and gazing with wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra thereupon laid
hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spake thus:

"If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do
so.

But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it as it listeth. We
are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands."

Thereupon the youth arose disconcerted, and said: "I hear Zarathustra, and
just now was I thinking of him!" Zarathustra answered:

"Why art thou frightened on that account?--But it is the same with man as
with the tree.

The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously
do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep--into the
evil."

"Yea, into the evil!" cried the youth. "How is it possible that thou hast