In another chapter on the back-worlds-men Nietzsche writes:
"Once Zarathustra threw his spell beyond man, like all back-worlds-men. Then the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tortured God.
"Alas! brethren, that God whom I created was man's work and man's madness, like all Gods!
"Man he was, and but a poor piece of man and the I. From mine own ashes and flame it came unto me, that ghost yea verily! It did not come unto me from beyond!
"What happened, brethren? I overcame myself, the sufferer, and carrying mine own ashes unto the mountains invented for myself a brighter flame. And lo! the ghost departed from me!
"Now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and pain to believe in such ghosts: suffering it would be for me and humiliation. Thus spake I unto the back-worlds-men."
Nietzsche's self is not ideal but material; it is not thought, not even the will, but the body. The following passage sounds like Vedantism as interpreted by a materialist:
"He who is awake and knoweth saith: Body I am throughout, and nothing besides; and soul is merely a word for a something in body.
"Body is one great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a herdsman.
"Also thy little reason, my brother, which thou callest 'spirit'—it is a tool of thy body, a little tool and toy of thy great reason.
"T, thou sayest and art proud of that word. But the greater thing is—which thou wilt not believe—thy body and its great reason. It doth not say T, but it is the acting 'I.'
"The self ever listeneth and seeketh: it compareth, subdueth, conquereth, destroyeth. It ruleth and is the ruler of the 'I' as well.
"Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, standeth a mighty lord, an unknown wise man—whose name is self. In thy body he dwelleth, thy body he is.
"There is more reason in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who can know why thy body needeth thy beat wisdom?
"Thy self laugheth at thine 'I' and its prancings: What are these boundings and flights of thought? it saith unto itself. A round-about way to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the I and the suggester of its concepts.
"The creative self created for itself valuing and despising, it created for itself lust and woe. The creative body created for itself the spirit to be the hand of its will."
One of the best passages in Zarathustra's sermons is Nietzsche's command to love the overman, the man of the distant future:
"I tell you, your love of your neighbor is your bad love of yourselves.
"Ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbor and would fain make a virtue thereof; but I see through your unselfishness.'
"The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been proclaimed holy, but the I not yet; man thus thrusteth himself upon his neighbor.
"Do I counsel you to love your neighbor? I rather counsel you to flee from your neighbor and to love the most remote.
"Love unto the most remote future man is higher than love unto your neighbor. And I consider love unto things and ghosts to be higher than love unto men.
"This ghost which marcheth before thee, my brother, is more beautiful than thou art. Why dost thou not give him thy flesh and thy bones? Thou art afraid and fleest unto thy neighbor.
"Unable to endure yourselves and not loving yourselves enough, you seek to wheedle your neighbor into loving you and thus to gild you with his error.
"My brethren, I counsel you not to love your neighbor; I counsel you to love those who are the most remote."
In perfect agreement with the ideal of the overman is Nietzsche's view of marriage, and verily it contains a very true and noble thought:
"Thou shalt build beyond thyself. But first thou must be built thyself square in body and soul.
"Thou shalt not only propagate thyself but propagate thyself upwards! Therefore the garden of marriage may help thee!
"Thou shalt create a higher body, a prime motor, a wheel of self-rolling,—thou shalt create a creator.
"Marriage: thus I call the will of two to create that one which is more than they who created it I call marriage reverence unto each other as unto those who will such a will.
"Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the much-too-many call marriage, those superfluous—alas, what call I that?
"Alas! that soul's poverty of two! Alas! that soul's dirt of two! Alas! that miserable ease of two!
"Marriage they call that; and they say marriage is made in heaven.
"Well, I like it not that heaven of the superfluous!"
Nietzsche takes a Schopenhauerian view of womankind, excepting from the common condemnation his sister alone, to whom he once said, "You are not a woman, you are a friend." He says of woman: