This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men! All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your “reality.” For thus speak ye: “Real are we wholly, and without faith and superstition”: thus do ye plume yourselves—alas! even without plumes! Indeed, how would ye be ABLE to believe, ye divers-coloured ones!—ye who are pictures of all that hath ever been believed! Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of all thought. UNTRUSTWORTHY ONES: thus do _I_ call you, ye real ones! All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams and pratings of all periods were even realer than your awakeness! Unfruitful are ye: THEREFORE do ye lack belief. But he who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions—and believed in believing!— Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is YOUR reality: “Everything deserveth to perish.” Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof. Many a one hath said: “There hath surely a God filched something from me secretly whilst I slept? Verily, enough to make a girl for himself therefrom! “Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!” thus hath spoken many a present-day man. Yea, ye are laughable unto me, ye present-day men! And especially when ye marvel at yourselves! And woe unto me if I could not laugh at your marvelling, and had to swallow all that is repugnant in your platters! As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to carry _what is heavy;_ and what matter if beetles and May-bugs also alight on my load! Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from you, ye present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.— Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands. But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all cities, and decamping at all gates. Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my heart impelled me; and exiled am I from fatherlands and motherlands. Thus do I love only my CHILDREN’S LAND, the undiscovered in the remotest sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search. Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers: and unto all the future—for THIS present-day!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXXVII. IMMACULATE PERCEPTION. When yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to bear a sun: so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon. But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe in the man in the moon than in the woman. To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller. Verily, with a bad conscience doth he stalk over the roofs.