Tell me… how is it that gold
is attributed the highest value?

Because it is uncommon,
and nonfunctional, and beaming, and soft in lustre;
it always bestows itself.

Only as image of the highest virtue
came gold to the highest value.

Goldlike, beams the glance of the bestower.
Gold-lustre makes peace
between moon and sun.

Uncommon is the highest virtue,
And nonfunctional, beaming is it, and
soft of lustre: a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue.

Nietzsche/Zarathustra invites the reader to muse upon the function of gold in the imagination. Gold is rare, highly prized primarily for the gleaming sheen of it’s reflected light. Gold gathers light, catches the eye. Gold is uncommon, sought on account of it’s rarity. Gold symbolizes the epitome of quality. As the greatest of virtue, is a desired, and universal benefit.

It is your thirst
to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves:
and therefore have you the thirst
to accumulate all riches in your soul.

Insatiably
strives your soul for treasures and jewels,
because your virtue
is insatiable in desiring to bestow.

You constrain all things
to flow towards you and into you,
so that
they shall flow back again out of your fountain
as the gifts of your love.
Truly, an appropriator of all values
must such bestowing. love become;

but healthy and holy,
I call this selfishness. –

The comparison is worth serious thought. To search for knowledge, desire bordering upon thirst comes to a point: the sheen of insight mined, deftly presented, becomes a “gift of love.” How could I disagree? My gratitude is unceasing for many of my teachers and professors. What they gave to me changed my life, contributing to the person I now am. Nietzsche/Zarathustra characterizes such pursuit as fulfilling, even holy, and at the same time, a selfishness.

Another selfishness is there,
an all-too-poor and hungry kind,
which would always steal – the selfishness of the sick,
the sickly selfishness.

With the eye of the thief
it looks upon all that is lustrous;
with the craving of hunger
it measures him who has abundance;
and ever does it prowl round the tables of bestowers.

Sickness speaks in such craving,
and invisible degeneration;
of a sickly body,
speaks the larcenous craving of this selfishness.

Tell me, my brother,
what do we think bad, and worst of all?
Is it not degeneration?

— And we always suspect degeneration
when the bestowing
soul is lacking.

And so a second type of selfishness is described. This is the one we are most accustomed to. The sick-selfishness, the hollow soul that cannot find fulfillment, the never-enough “takers” who believe themselves to be victim, hungry ghosts in-three-piece-suits are degenerate souls. It is remarkable that such opposite types of life-orientation are both designated as selfish. The issue is not whether our body is the locus of desire. Rather, what form does desire take? Is desire the sick, degenerate type? Or, does one’s passion flame with the luster of gold, a delight, a elevation of spirit and body, inviting all others “to become” who you are.

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, The Bestowing Virtue No. 22

What about a song, a tune to serve as our “southern cross” to set a course by? This one by the Rolling Stones coincides with the Nietzschean insight that language easily and often gets in the way of living. A quest to be unselfish, a fixation on whether behavior is selfish or not is wrong-headed. Every thing human, every virtue has a degree of self-centeredness.  Just live!

Enjoy Mixed Emotions by a great Blues band, The Rolling Stones.