I. THE THREE METAMORPHOSES.

Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen.

The dream—and diction—of a God, did the world then seem to me; coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.

Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou—coloured vapours did they seem to me before creative eyes.

Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself.

This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction’s image and imperfect image—an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:—thus did the world once seem to me. To exhibit one’s folly in order to mock at one’s wisdom?

Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?

Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!

A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego.

What happened, my brethren?

To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation.

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 death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.

Believe me, my brethren!

Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the earth—it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it.

And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head—and not with its head only—into “the other world.”

But that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.

Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak. Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved?

Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most uprightly of its being—this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is the measure and value of things. Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?

And this most upright existence, the ego—it speaketh of the body, and still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth with broken wings.

Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it learneth, the more doth it find titles and honours for the body and the earth.

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! Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.

A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed blindly, and to approve of it—and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing!

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! Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?

From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for them.

Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied themselves transported, these ungrateful ones.

Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly.

Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow.