Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a healed one?

Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good one? Or an evil one?

I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future: that future which I contemplate.

And it is all my poetisation and aspiration, to compose and collect into unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance.

And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance!

To redeem what is past, and to transform every ‘It was’ into ‘Thus would I have it!’—that only do I call redemption!

Will—so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner.

Willing emancipateth; but what is that called which still putteth the emancipator in chains?

‘It was’: thus is the Will’s teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation called. Impotent towards what hath been done—it is a malicious spectator of all that is past.

Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time’s desire—that is the Will’s lonesomest tribulation.

Willing emancipateth: what doth Willing itself devise in order to get free from its tribulation and mock at its prison?

Ah, a fool becometh every prisoner! Foolishly delivereth itself also the imprisoned Will.

That time doth not run backward—that is its animosity. ‘That which was’: so is the stone which it cannot roll called.

And thus doth it roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and taketh revenge on whatever doth not, like it, feel rage and ill-humour.

Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and on all that is capable of suffering it taketh revenge, because it cannot go backward.

This, yea this alone is revenge itself: the Will’s antipathy to time, and its ‘It was’.

Verily, a great folly dwelleth in our Will; and it became a curse unto all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit!

The spirit of revenge, my friends, that hath hitherto been man’s best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty.

‘Penalty’, so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it feigneth a good conscience.

And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot will backwards, thus was Willing itself, and all life, claimed— to be penalty!

And then did cloud after cloud roll over the spirit, until at last madness preached: ‘Everything perisheth, therefore everything deserveth to perish!’