.
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.

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!

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!

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 by-paths and bloody draughts!

Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied
themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe
the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this
earth.

Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly. Verily, he is not indignant
at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become
convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves!

Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly
on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God;
but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears.

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: then, indeed, were delusion
and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness to God,
and doubt was sin.

Too well do I know those godlike ones: they insist on being believed in,
and