Free Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale Page A

knows for what purpose your body requires precisely your best wisdom?
    Your Self laughs at your Ego and its proud leapings. ‘What are these leapings and flights of thought to me?’ it says to itself. ‘A by-way to my goal. I am the Ego’s leading-string and I prompt its conceptions.’
    The Self says to the Ego: ‘Feel pain!’ Thereupon it suffers and gives thought how to end its suffering – and it is meant to think for just that purpose.
    The Self says to the Ego: ‘Feel joy!’ Thereupon it rejoices and gives thought how it may often rejoice – and it is meant to think for just that purpose.
    I want to say a word to the despisers of the body. It is their esteem that produces this disesteem. What is it that created esteem and disesteem and value and will?
    The creative Self created for itself esteem and disesteem, it created for itself joy and sorrow. The creative body created spirit for itself, as a hand of its will.
    Even in your folly and contempt, you despisers of the body,you serve your Self. I tell you: your Self itself wants to die and turn away from life.
    Your Self can no longer perform that act which it most desires to perform: to create beyond itself. That is what it most wishes to do, that is its whole ardour.
    But now it has grown too late for that: so your Self wants to perish, you despisers of the body.
    Your Self wants to perish, and that is why you have become despisers of the body! For no longer are you able to create beyond yourselves.
    And therefore you are now angry with life and with the earth. An unconscious envy lies in the sidelong glance of your contempt.
    I do not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are not bridges to the Superman!
    Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of Joys and Passions
    M Y brother, if you have a virtue and it is your own virtue, you have it in common with no one.
    To be sure, you want to call it by a name and caress it; you want to pull its ears and amuse yourself with it.
    And behold! Now you have its name in common with the people and have become of the people and the herd with your virtue!
    You would do better to say: ‘Unutterable and nameless is that which torments and delights my soul and is also the hunger of my belly.’
    Let your virtue be too exalted for the familiarity of names: and if you have to speak of it, do not be ashamed to stammer.
    Thus say and stammer: ‘This is my good, this I love, just thus do I like it, only thus do I wish the good.
    ‘I do not want it as a law of God, I do not want it as a human statute: let it be no sign-post to superearths and paradises.
    ‘It is an earthly virtue that I love: there is little prudence in it, and least of all common wisdom.
    ‘But this bird has built its nest beneath my roof: therefore I love and cherish it – now it sits there upon its golden eggs.’
    Thus should you stammer and praise your virtue.
    Once you had passions and called them evil. But now you have only your virtues: they grew from out your passions.
    You laid your highest aim in the heart of these passions: then they became your virtues and joys.
    And though you came from the race of the hot-tempered or of the lustful or of the fanatical or of the vindictive:
    At last all your passions have become virtues and all your devils angels.
    Once you had fierce dogs in your cellar: but they changed at last into birds and sweet singers.
    From your poison you brewed your balsam; you milked your cow, affliction, now you drink the sweet milk of her udder.
    And henceforward nothing evil shall come out of you, except it be the evil that comes from the conflict of your virtues.
    My brother, if you are lucky you will have one virtue and no more: thus you will go more easily over the bridge.
    To have many virtues is to be distinguished, but it is a hard fate; and many a man has gone into the desert and killed himself because he was tired of being a battle and battleground of virtues.
    My brother, are war and battle evil? But this evil is necessary, envy and