138 THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, II
each of their praises is a sore ; and to be judges ap- peareth unto them to be bliss.
But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful !
They are folk of bad kin and descent. Out of their countenances look the hang-man and blood-hound.
Mistrust all those who talk much of their justice ! Verily, it is not honey merely that their souls lack.
And if they call themselves 'the good and just' forget not that to be Pharisees they lack nothing but
��power
��My friends, I like not to be confounded with and taken for a wrong one.
There are some that preach my doctrine of life but at the same time are preachers of equality and tarantulae.
If they speak favourably of life although they sit in their cave, these poisonous spiders, and have turned away from life : it is because they wish to cause pain.
They intend to cause pain unto those who now have power ; for with them the sermon of death is most at home.
Were it otherwise the tarantulae would teach other- wise. Once it was just they who were the best calum- niators of the world and the best burners of heretics.
I do not wish to be confounded with, and mistaken for these preachers of equality. For within me justice saith : ' Men are not equal.'
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