Chapter XLII. Redemption. Zarathustra here addresses cripples. He tells them of other cripples—the GREAT MEN in this world who have one organ or faculty inordinately developed at the cost of their other faculties. This is doubtless a reference to a fact which is too often noticeable in the case of so many of the world’s giants in art, science, or religion. In verse 19 we are told what Nietzsche called Redemption—that is to say, the ability to say of all that is past: “Thus would I have it.” The in ability to say this, and the resentment which results therefrom, he regards as the source of all our feelings of revenge, and all our desires to punish—punishment meaning to him merely a euphemism for the word revenge, invented in order to still our consciences. He who can be proud of his enemies, who can be grateful to them for the obstacles they have put in his way; he who can regard his worst calamity as but the extra strain on the bow of his life, which is to send the arrow of his longing even further than he could have hoped;—this man knows no revenge, neither does he know despair, he truly has found redemption and can turn on the worst in his life and even in himself, and call it his best (see Notes on Chapter LVII.).
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