Learning (From “Thus Spake Zarathustra”) by Friedrich Nietzsche. Upton Sinclair, ed. 1915. The Cry for Justice

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

Learning
(From “Thus Spake Zarathustra”)

By 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.”	1
Said it and went strutting away, and proud. A child told it to me.…	2
This is the truth. I am gone out of the house of the scholars, and have slammed to the door behind me.…	3
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.	4
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.	5
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.	6
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?	7