The Tarantulas

Lo, this is the tarantula’s den! Would’st thou see the tarantula itself? Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble.

Cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul.

Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab; with revenge thy poison maketh the soul giddy!

Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of equality! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones!

But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light; therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height.

Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word ‘justice’.

Because, for man to be redeemed from revenge — that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.

Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. ‘Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance’ — thus do they talk to one another.

‘Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us’ — thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.

‘And “Will to Equality” — that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!’

Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for ‘equality’: your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!

Fretted conceit and suppressed envy — perhaps your fathers’ conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.

What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found the son the father’s revealed secret.

Inspired ones they resemble; yet it is not the heart that inspireth them — but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so.

Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers’ paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy — they always go too far, so that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow.

In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth- hound.

Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking.

And when they call themselves ‘the good and just’, forget not that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but — power!