OF THE TREE AT THE HILL
Zarathustra's eye had seen that a young man avoided him. And one night when walking alone through the hills round about the town that is called "the Cow of Many Colours": behold, walking there he found that young man sitting with his back against a tree and gazing into the valley with a tired look. Zarathustra taking hold of the tree against which the young man was sitting spake thus:
"If I wished to shake this tree with my hands I could not do so.
But the wind which we do not see tormenteth and bendeth it wherever it listeth. By unseen hands we are bent and tormented worst."
Astonished the young man rose and said: "I hear Zarathustra and was just thinking of him." Zarathustra answered:
"Wherefore dost thou fear? It is with man as with the tree.
The more he would ascend to height and light the stronger are his roots striving earthwards, downwards, into the dark, the deep, the evil."
