ONCE on a time, Zarathustra also cast his delusion beyond man,
like all the afterworldly. The work of a suffering and tortured
God, the world then seemed to me.
The dream- and fiction- of a God, the world then seemed to me;
colored vapors before the eyes of a divinely suffering one.
Good and evil, and joy and pain, and I and you- colored vapors
did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to
look away from himself,- and so he created the world.
Intoxicating joy it is for the sufferer to look away from his
suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting,
the world once seemed to me.
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's
image and imperfect image- an intoxicating joy to its imperfect
creator:- thus the world once seemed to me.
Thus did I too once cast my delusion beyond man, like all the
afterworldly. Beyond man?
Ah, my brothers, that God whom I created was man-made and
madness, like all gods!
Man he was, and only a poor fragment of man and ego. Out of my
own ashes and glow this ghost came to me. And verily, it did not
come to me from the beyond!
What happened then, my brothers? I overcame myself, the
suffering one; I carried my own ashes to the mountain; I created a
brighter flame for myself. And lo! This ghost fled from me!
Now it would be suffering and torment to believe in such ghosts:
now it would be suffering and humiliation. Thus I speak to the
afterworldly.
It was suffering and impotence- that created all afterworlds;
and the brief madness of bliss, which only the greatest sufferer
experiences.
Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with a
death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any
longer: that created all gods and afterworlds.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body which despaired of the
body- it groped with the fingers of the deluded spirit at the
ultimate walls.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body which despaired of the
earth- it heard the bowels of being speaking to it.
And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its
head- and not only with its head - into "the other world."
But that "other world" is well concealed from man, that
dehumanized, inhuman world which is a heavenly nothing; and the
bowels of being do not speak to man, except as man.
It is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak.
Tell me, my brothers, is not the strangest of all things the best
proved?
Yes, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaks
most honestly of its being- this creating, willing, valuing ego,
which is the measure and value of things.
And this most honest being, the ego- it speaks of the body, and
still implies the body, even when it muses and raves and flutters
with broken wings.
It learns to speak ever more honestly, the ego; and the more it
learns, the more titles and honors does it find for body and
earth.
A new pride my ego taught me, and this I teach to men: no longer
to bury one's head into the sand of heavenly things, but to carry
it freely, a earthly head, which gives meaning to the earth!
I teach men a new will: to will this path which man has followed
blindly, and to affirm it- and no longer to slink aside from it,
like the sick and decaying!
The sick and decaying- it was they who despised the body and the
earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming
blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed
from the body and the earth!
From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too
remote for them. Then they sighed: "O that there were heavenly
paths by which to steal into another existence and into happiness!"
Then they contrived for themselves their bypaths and bloody
potions!
These ungrateful ones, they now hallucinated their transport
beyond the sphere of their body and this earth,. But to what did
they owe the convulsion and rapture of this transport? To their
body and this earth.
Zarathustra is gentle with the sick. He is not indignant at
their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become
convalescents, men of overcoming, and create higher bodies for
themselves!
Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looks
tenderly on his delusions, and at midnight steals round the grave
of his God; but sickness and a sick body remain even in his
tears.
Many sickly ones have always been among those who muse and crave
for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of
virtues, which is honesty.
They always look backward to dark ages: Indeed, delusion and
faith were then something different. To rave reason was godlike,
and to doubt was sin.
Too well do I know those godlike ones: they want that one should
believe them, and that doubt should be sin. But I know too well
what they themselves most believe.
Not in afterworlds and redeeming blood-drops: but in the body do
they believe most; and their body is for them the
thing-in-itself.
But it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they shed
their skin. Therefore they hearken to the preachers of death, and
themselves preach afterworlds.
Hearken rather, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body;
it is a more honest and pure voice.
More honestly and purely speaks the healthy body, perfect and
square-built; and it speaks of the meaning of the earth.-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.