Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man,
But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening.
And of the man in you would I now speak.
For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime.
Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
Nietzsche’s disciple Kahlil Gibran makes Zarathustra seem kitschy and hokey to me, a precursor of the fin-de-siècle decadence and orientalism. I’m not sure that this will ever entirely change. I find the book more readable in my (weak) German than it had been in English, and by now I’ve found some good parts, but (except for Mr. Natural) I find cave-dwelling prophets hard to take.
Haquelebac 
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