Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee.
Or does the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or discord in thee?
I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation.
Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul.
Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that purpose may the garden of marriage help thee!
A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling wheel—a creating one shalt thou create.
Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.
Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones—ah, what shall I call it?
Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain!
Marriage they call it all; 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 toils!
Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not matched!
Laugh not at such marriages! What child has not had reason to weep over its parents?
Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps.
