Chapter LVII

.).

What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra sees a young shepherd struggling on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his throat. The sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the young man’s mouth while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls at the loathsome reptile with all his might, but in vain. At last, in despair, Zarathustra appeals to the young man’s will. Knowing full well what a ghastly operation he is recommending, he nevertheless cries, “Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite!” as the only possible solution of the difficulty. The young shepherd bites, and far away he spits the snake’s head, whereupon he rises, “No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as he laughed!”

In this parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice “Bite! Bite!” is but Nietzsche’s exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values before it is too late.

## Chapter XLVII . Involuntary Bliss.

This, like “The Wanderer”, is one of the many introspective passages in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean outlook on life.

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