are the three best
cursed things in the world? These will I put on the scales.

VOLUPTUOUSNESS, PASSION FOR POWER, and SELFISHNESS: these three things
have hitherto been best cursed, and have been in worst and falsest
repute--these three things will I weigh humanly well.

Well! Here is my promontory, and there is the sea--IT rolleth hither
unto me, shaggily and fawningly, the old, faithful, hundred-headed
dog-monster that I love!--

Well! Here will I hold the scales over the weltering sea: and also a
witness do I choose to look on--thee, the anchorite-tree, thee, the
strong-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!--

On what bridge goeth the now to the hereafter? By what constraint doth
the high stoop to the low? And what enjoineth even the highest still--to
grow upwards?--

Now stand the scales poised and at rest: three heavy questions have I
thrown in; three heavy answers carrieth the other scale.

2.

Voluptuousness: unto all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a sting and
stake; and, cursed as "the world," by all backworldsmen: for it mocketh
and befooleth all erring, misinferring teachers.

Voluptuousness: to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is burnt;
to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew
furnace.

Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the
garden-happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks-overflow to the
present.

Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed,
however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines.

Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness
and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than
marriage,--

--To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman:--and
who hath fully understood HOW UNKNOWN to each other are man and woman!

Voluptuousness:--but I will have hedges around my thoughts, and
even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my
gardens!--

Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard;
the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy
flame of living pyres.

Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted on the vainest
peoples; the scorner of all uncertain virtue; which rideth on every
horse and on every pride.

Passion for power: the earthquake which breaketh and upbreaketh all
that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolishe