He continued listening intently, and, with his ear attuned anew, these sentiments broke strangely upon his senses:—
"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."[5]
There was no time for brooding over stray thoughts; there was still much to be seen and hoard. When you want to catch some one napping, you keep your eye eagerly upon him, and turn neither to the right nor to the left. Nietzsche, it must be remembered, was at this stage treading softly towards Europe whom he believed to be "napping."
In his lonely hermit cell he was able to catch all the sounds that rose from the city beneath him, and he heard perhaps more than the inhabitants themselves.
He could see them all fighting and quarrelling, and he was cheered, because he knew that where the great fight for power ceases, the standard of life falls. But some he saw were wounded, others were actually unfit for the battlefield, a large number looked tired and listless, and there were yet others—a goodly multitude—who were resentful at the sight of their superiors and who, like sulky children, dropped their arms in a pet and declared that they would not play any more. And what were all these feeble and less viable mortals doing? They were crying aloud, and making their deepest wishes known. They were elevating their desiderata to the highest places amongst earthly virtues—and driving back the others with words! Nietzsche thought of Reynard the Fox, who, at the very moment that he was about to be hanged, and with the rope already round his neck, succeeded by his dialectical skill in persuading the crowd to release him. For Nietzsche could hear the weary, the wounded, and the incapable of the fight, crying quite distinctly through their lips parched for rest: "Peace is good! Love is good! Love for one's neighbour is good! Ay, and even love for one's enemy is good!"[6]
And some cried: "It is God that avengeth me!" to those who oppressed them, and others said: "The Lord avenge me!"[7]
Whereupon Nietzsche thought of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the God of revenge and thunderbolts; he recalled the sentiment: "Ye shall chase your enemies and they shall fall fall before you by the sword," and he wondered how this had come to mean "love your enemies," in the New Testament. Had another type of men perhaps made themselves God's mouthpiece?