11

It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned—

Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its bridge!

A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing.

This however is the other danger, and mine other sympathy: he who is of the populace, his thoughts go back to his grandfather— with his grandfather, however, doth time cease.

Thus is all the past abandoned; for it might some day happen for the populace to become master, and drown all time in shallow waters.

Therefore, O my brethren, a new nobility is needed, which shall be the adversary of all populace and potentate rule, and shall inscribe anew the word ‘noble’ on new tables.

For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, for a new nobility! Or, as I once said in parable: ‘That is just divinity, that there are Gods, but no God!’

12

O my brethren, I consecrate you and point you to a new nobility: ye shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future—

Verily, not to a nobility which ye could purchase like traders with traders’ gold; for little worth is all that hath its price.

Let it not be your honour henceforth whence ye come, but whither ye go! Your Will and your feet which seek to surpass you —let these be your new honour!

Verily, not that ye have served a prince—of what account are princes now! Nor that ye have become a bulwark to that which standeth, that it may stand more firmly.

Not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that ye have learned—gay-coloured, like the flamingo—to stand long hours in shallow pools:

(For ability-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all courtiers believe that unto blessedness after death pertaineth—permission-to-sit!)

Nor even that a Spirit called ‘Holy’ led your forefather into promised lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew—the cross—in that land there is nothing to praise!

And verily, wherever this ‘Holy Spirit’ led its knights, always in such campaigns did—goats and geese, and wry-heads and guy-heads, run foremost!

O my brethren, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but outward! Exiles shall ye be from all fatherlands and forefather-lands!

Your children’s land shall ye love; let this love be your new nobility—the undiscovered in the remotest seas! For it do I bid your sails search and search!

Unto your children shall ye make amends for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall ye thus redeem! This new table do I place over you!