A nefarious adaptation of the parable of the madman.

VERITAS, VERITAS, VERITAS

In an age of relativism only madmen speak of absolute truth.

THE MADMAN----Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek Truth! I seek Truth!"---As many of those who did not believe in Truth were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has it been lost? asked one. Did it lose its way like a child? asked another. Or is it hidden? ---Thus they yelled and laughed

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither Truth?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed it---you and I. All of us are its murderers. But how did we do this? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?

Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying Truth? Do we smell nothing as yet of the decomposition? Truth, too, decomposes. Truth is dead. Truth remains dead, absolutely. And we did it.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of killing truth? Are we able to weald such power to cut truth up till nothing contradicts?

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too late," he said then; "my time has passed. This tremendous event is behind us now - it has already numbed the ears of men. The time has passed yet I push on. The past is already, history can not be changed, things dead can not rise again. Dead men's minds can not be changed; Homer's breath can not be regained! Yet today is felt the thunder clap, today is seen yesterdays star-light, Deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. Yet this deed has its day, this deed today gives light - and they have done it to themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his Requiem aeternam veritati. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied: "If truth is dead, what after all are these churches now if nothing more then memorials to Truth? Yet, who knows truth but those graced with a glimpse of its source? Where is Truth if not in the mouth of those who delight of its goodness? How is truth dead when HE walks among us? Truth has RISEN but you, It is YOU, who remain died!!"

This nefarious Adaptation by J. Dawson Jarrell of the madman in the marketplace from Friedrich Nietzsche's, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.