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Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

Learning
(From “Thus Spake Zarathustra”)

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm

Friedrich Nietzsche

(German philosopher, 1844–1900, whose lofty utterance has suffered from materialistic interpreters)

AS I lay in sleep a sheep ate up the ivy crown of my head—ate and then said: “Zarathustra is no more a scholar.”

Said it and went strutting away, and proud. A child told it to me.…

This is the truth. I am gone out of the house of the scholars, and have slammed to the door behind me.…

I am too hot, and burning with my own thoughts; oft will it take away my breath. I must into the open and out of all dusty rooms.

But they sit cool in cool shadows; they wish in all things to be but spectators, and guard themselves lest they sit where the sun burn the steps.

Like those who stand upon the street and stare at the people who go by; so they wait also and stare at the thoughts that others have thought.

If one touches them with the hands, they make dust around them like meal-sacks, and involuntarily; but who could guess that their dust comes from corn and the golden rapture of the summer fields?