36 THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, I
and invented the heavenly and the redeeming blood- drops : but even those sweet and gloomy poisons were borrowed from body and earth !
They sought to escape from their misery, and the stars were too remote for them. Then they sighed : Would that there were heavenly ways by which to steal into another existence and happiness ! they in- vented for themselves their byways and little bloody drinks !
And they professed to be beyond the reach of their body and this earth, the ungrateful ones. But to whom did they owe the convulsion and delight of their removal ! To their body and this earth.
Kind unto the sick is Zarathustra. Verily, he is not angry at their ways of consolation and ingrati- tude. Would they were convalescent and conquering and creating a higher body for themselves !
Neither is Zarathustra angry with the convalescent one, if he looketh fondly back upon his illusion and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God : but even his tears remain for me a disease and a sick body.
Many sick folk were always among the makers of poetry and the god-passionate ; furiously they hate him who perceiveth and that youngest of virtues that is called honesty.
Backward they ever gaze into the dark times : then, of course, illusion and belief were something
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