The virtue of the pillar shall you strive after: more beautiful does it ever become, and more graceful- but internally harder and more sustaining- the higher it rises.
Yes, you sublime one, one day shall you also be beautiful, and hold up the mirror to your own beauty.
Then will your soul thrill with divine desires; and there will be adoration even in your vanity!
For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero has abandoned it, then only approach it in dreams- the super-hero.-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
36. The Land of Culture
TOO far did I fly into the future: a horror seized upon me.
And when I looked around me, behold, there time was my sole contemporary.
Then did I fly backwards, homewards- and always faster. Thus did I come to you: you present-day men, and into the land of culture.
For the first time brought I an eye to see you, and good desire: verily, with longing in my heart did I come.
But how did it turn out with me? Although so alarmed- I had yet to laugh! Never did my eye see anything so motley-colored!
I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled, and my heart as well. "Here , is the home of all the paint-pots,"- said I.
