OF BACK-WORLDS-MEN 35
But 'the other world' is carefully hidden from man, that brutish, inhuman world which is a heavenly nothing; and the womb of existence speaketh not unto man unless as man.
Verily, difficult to be proved is all existence and difficult to be induced to speak. Tell me, brethren, hath not the oddest of all things been proved even best of all ?
Ay, that I and the contradiction and confusion of the I speak most honestly of all existence, that creat- ing, willing, valuing I which is the measure and the value of things.
And that most honest existence, that I which speaketh of the body and still willeth the body even when composing poetry and imagining and fluttering with broken wings.
Even more honestly it learneth to speak, that I : and the more it learneth, the more words and honours for body and earth it findeth.
A new pride I have been taught by mine I ; and this I teach men : no more to put their head into the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earth-head that giveth significance unto earth !
A new will I teach men : to will that way which man hath gone blindly and to call it good and no longer to shirk aside from it like the sickly and dying.
The sickly and dying folk despised body and earth
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