thought suddenly thrust itself through me.") This same idea is found again in Nietzsche in Zarathustra:
The Magician
Stretched out, shivering
Like one half dead whose feet are warmed,
Shaken alas! by unknown fevers,
Trembling from the icy pointed arrows of frost,
Hunted by Thee, O Thought!
Unutterable! Veiled! Horrible One!
Thou huntsman behind the clouds!
Struck to the ground by thee,
Thou mocking eye that gazeth at me from the dark!
Thus do I lie
Bending, writhing, tortured
With all eternal tortures,
Smitten
By thee, crudest huntsman,
Thou unfamiliar God.
Smite deeper!
Smite once more:
Pierce through and rend my heart!
What meaneth this torturing
With blunt-toothed arrows?
Why gazeth thou again,
Never weary of human pain,
With malicious, God-lightning eyes,
Thou wilt not kill,
But torture, torture?
No long-drawn-out explanation is necessary to enable us to recognize in this comparison the old, universal idea of the martyred sacrifice of God, which we have met previously in the Mexican sacrifice of the cross and in the sacrifice of Odin.[31] This same conception faces us in
