Verily, a polluted stream is man.One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged.What is the greatest thing you can experience?It is the hour of great contempt.The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue.The hour when you say: "What good is my happiness!It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency.But my happiness should justify existence itself!"The hour when you say: "What good is my reason!Does it long for knowledge as the lion for his food?It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!"The hour when you say: "What good is my virtue!As yet it has not made me passionate.How weary I am of my good and my bad!It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self- complacency!"The hour when you say: "What good is my justice!I do not see that I am fervor and fuel.The just, however, are fervor and fuel!"The hour when you say: "What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loves man?But my pity is not a crucifixion.
