6 passages
Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world then seem to me. The dream—and diction—of a God, did the world then seem to me;…
Zarathustra tells how he once cast his fancy beyond man and saw the world as the intoxicated vision of a tortured God. He then realised the God was his own human phantom, which left him when he made a brighter flame for himself.
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Suffering was it, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth. Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a…
Zarathustra explains that suffering, impotence and a weary unwillingness to will made the other worlds. The body, despairing of itself, reached for the ultimate walls and found only nothing.
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A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!
The ego, with all its perplexity, speaks most honestly of its being and honours the body and the earth. Zarathustra teaches a new pride and a new will: carry a terrestrial head and approve man's path.
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A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!
Zarathustra names the new pride he teaches: a head that gives meaning to the earth.
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The sick and perishing—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!…
The sick sought escape from misery by contriving heavenly paths. Zarathustra is gentle with them and hopes they will recover and create higher bodies, though sickness stays in a convalescent's tears at his God's grave.
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Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness. Backward they always gaze toward dark ages:…
Zarathustra says the God-longing hate doubt and uprightness, yet their real belief is in the body, which they find sickly. He tells his brethren to hear the healthy body, which speaks of the meaning of the earth.
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