Man’s furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers—do not all these foam through one another in your vessel?
What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, O, how much is still possible!
And verily, how much hath already succeeded! How rich is this earth in small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things!
Set around you small, good, perfect things, ye higher men. Their golden maturity healeth the heart. The perfect teacheth one to hope.
16.
What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the word of him who said: “Woe unto them that laugh now!”
Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child even findeth cause for it.
He—did not love sufficiently: otherwise would he also have loved us, the laughing ones! But he hated and hooted us; wailing and teeth-gnashing did he promise us.
Must one then curse immediately, when one doth not love? That—seemeth to me bad taste. Thus did he, however, this absolute one. He sprang from the populace.
And he himself just did not love sufficiently; otherwise would he have raged less because people did not love him. All great love doth not SEEK love:—it seeketh more.