ON CHILD AND MARRIAGE

ON CHILD AND MARRIAGE

I HAVE A QUESTION for you alone, my brother: like a sounding lead I cast this question into your soul, to discover how deep it is.

You are young and wish for children and marriage. But I ask you: are you a man entitled to wish for a child?

Are you the victor, the self-conqueror, the ruler of your senses, the master of your virtues? Thus I ask you.

Or is it the animal and need that speak in your wish? Or loneliness ? Or discord in you?

I would have your victory and your freedom long for a child. You shall build living monuments to your victory and your liberation.

You shall build over and beyond yourself. But first you must be built yourself, perpendicular in body and soul.

Not only forward shall you propagate yourself, but upward! May the garden of marriage help you to do it!

You shall create a higher body, a first movement, a self-propelled wheel—you will create a creator.

Marriage: thus I name the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it. Reverence for one another, as those willing with such a will, is what I name marriage.

Let this be the meaning and the truth of your marriage. But that which the all-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones—ah, what shall I call it?

Ah, the poverty of soul in partnership! Ah, the filth of soul in partnership! Ah, the pitiable contentment in partnership!

Marriage they call this; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.

Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly net!

And let the god who limps near to bless what he has not joined stay far from me!

Do not laugh at such marriages! What child has not had reason to weep over its parents?

This man seemed worthy to me and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a house for the senseless.

Yes, I wished that the earth would shake with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another.

This one went forth in quest of truth like a hero, and at last he captured for himself a little dressed-up lie. He calls it his marriage.

That one was reserved in his dealings and chose choicely. But all at once he spoiled his company forever: he calls it his marriage.

That one sought a maid with the virtues of an angel. But suddenly he became the maid of a woman, and now he needs to become an angel too.

I have found all buyers to be cautious now, and all of them have cunning eyes. But even the most cunning among them buys his wife while she is still wrapped.

Many brief follies-that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity.

Your love of woman and woman’s love of man: ah, if only it were sympathy for suffering and veiled gods! But generally two animals sense one another.

But even your best love is only a passionate impersonation and a painful ardor. It is a torch that should light you to loftier paths.

One day you shall love beyond yourselves! So learn first to love. And for that you had to drain the bitter cup of your love.

Bitterness lies in the cup of even the best love: thus it arouses longing for the Übermensch, thus it arouses thirst in you, the creator!

A creator’s thirst, arrow and longing for the Übermensch: tell me, my brother, is this your will to marriage?

Holy I call such a will and such a marriage.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.