On Child and Marriage

I have a question for you alone, my brother: like a plumb line I cast this question into your soul, so that I may know how deep it is.

You are young and wish for a child and marriage. But I ask you: are you a human being who is entitled to wish for a child?

Are you the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the commander of the senses, the master of your virtues? So I ask you.

Or does the animal speak out of your wish, and need? Or isolation? Or discord with yourself?

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

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

Not only onward shall you propagate yourself, but upward! For that may the garden of marriage help you!

You shall create a higher body, a first movement, a wheel rolling out of itself,—you shall create a creator.

Marriage: so I call the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it. Reverence for each other, as for those who will such a will, is what I call marriage.

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

Ah, this poverty of the soul in twos! Ah, this filth of the soul in twos! Ah, this wretched contentment in twos!

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

Well, I do not like it, this heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, these animals entangled in the heavenly net!

Far from me too be the god who comes limping up to bless what he did not join together!

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

Worthy this man seemed 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 wish the earth would quake in convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with each other.

This one went out like a hero in search of truths, and at last he captured a little dressed-up lie. His marriage he calls it.

That one was standoffish in company and chose choosily. But all at once he spoiled his company for all time: his marriage he calls it.

That one sought a maidservant with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the maidservant of a woman, and now he would need to become an angel besides.

I have found all buyers careful now, and all have cunning eyes. But even the most cunning buys his wife in a sack.

Many brief follies—that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, as one long stupidity.

Your love for woman and woman’s love for man: ah, if only it were pity for suffering and veiled gods! But for the most part two animals find each other out.

But even your best love is only an ecstatic parable and a painful ardor. It is a torch that should light your way to higher paths.

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

There is bitterness in the cup even of the best love: thus it creates longing for the Übermensch, thus it creates thirst in you, the creator!

Thirst in the creator, 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.