On Chastity

I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there are too many who are in heat there.

Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a woman in heat?

And just look at these men: their eye says it—they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.

There is mud at the bottom of their soul; and woe if their mud has spirit too!

If only you were at least perfect as animals! But innocence belongs to the animal.

Do I counsel you to kill your senses? I counsel you to the innocence of the senses.

Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue in some, but in many almost a vice.

These abstain, to be sure: but the bitch Sensuality looks out with envy from everything they do.

Even into the heights of their virtue and right into the cold spirit this beast follows them, and its unrest.

And how nicely the bitch Sensuality knows how to beg for a piece of spirit when a piece of meat is denied her!

You love tragedies and everything that breaks the heart? But I am mistrustful of your bitch.

Your eyes are too cruel for me, and you look lustfully at those who suffer. Has not your lust merely disguised itself and called itself pity?

And this parable too I give you: not a few who wanted to drive out their devil went into the swine themselves.

Whoever finds chastity hard should be counseled against it: so that it does not become the road to hell—that is, to mud and heat of the soul.

Do I speak of dirty things? That is not the worst thing to me.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the knower dislike stepping into its water.

Truly, there are some who are chaste through and through: they are gentler of heart, they laugh more readily and more abundantly than you.

They laugh at chastity too, and ask: “What is chastity!

Is chastity not folly? But this folly came to us, and not we to it.

We offered this guest lodging and heart: now it lives with us,—let it stay as long as it wants!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.