Give heed, my brethren, to every hour when your spirit would speak in similes: there is the origin of your virtue.

Elevated is then your body, and raised up; with its delight enraptureth it the spirit, so that it becometh creator, and valuer, and lover, and everything’s benefactor.

When your heart overfloweth broad and full like the river, a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders, there is the origin of your virtue.

When ye are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command all things, as a loving one’s will, there is the origin of your virtue. When ye despise pleasant things, and the effeminate couch, and cannot couch far enough from the effeminate, there is the origin of your virtue.

When ye are willers of one will, and when that change of every need is needful to you, there is the origin of your virtue.

Verily, a new good and evil is it! Verily, a new deep murmuring, and the voice of a new fountain!

Power is it, this new virtue; a ruling thought is it, and around it a subtle soul: a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge around it.

2

Here paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus — and his voice had changed:

Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth! Thus do I pray and conjure you.

Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with its wings! Ah, there hath always been so much flown-away virtue!

Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth — yea, back to body and life, that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning!

A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue flown away and blundered. Alas, in our body dwelleth still all this delusion and blundering! Body and will hath it there become.

A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue attempted and erred. Yea, an attempt hath man been. Alas, much ignorance and error hath become embodied in us!

Not only the rationality of millenniums — also their madness breaketh out in us. Dangerous is it to be an heir.

Still fight we step by step with the giant Chance, and over all mankind hath hitherto ruled nonsense, the lack-of-sense.

Let your spirit and your virtue be devoted to the sense of the earth, my brethren; let the value of everything be determined anew by you! Therefore shall ye be fighters! Therefore shall ye be creators!

Intelligently doth the body purify itself; attempting with intelligence it exalteth itself; to the discerners all impulses sanctify themselves; to the exalted the soul becometh joyful.

Physician, heal thyself; then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.