Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
Zarathustra announces the three stages through which the spirit passes.
Read in the book →Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength. What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then…
The strong, reverent spirit kneels like a camel and asks for the heaviest load. A list of self-denying burdens follows, and it hastens with them into the wilderness.
Read in the book →But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness. Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him,…
In the wilderness the spirit becomes a lion and seeks to master its last Lord and God. The great dragon, 'Thou shalt', is covered in golden scales of old values and declares that there shall be no 'I will'.
Read in the book →“Thou shalt,” is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, “I will.”
The dragon is named and the lion's answer is given.
Read in the book →My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent? To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create…
The lion cannot yet create new values, but it can capture the freedom to do so. It must find illusion and arbitrariness even in what it once held holiest.
Read in the book →But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child? Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling…
The child is innocence, forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel and a holy Yea. The spirit now wills its own will and wins its own world.
Read in the book →Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.
The child is defined in a series of images.
Read in the book →Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.— Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called…
The three metamorphoses are repeated. The narrator adds that Zarathustra then abode in the town called The Pied Cow.
Read in the book →This is an experiment in interactive reading, and in using AI to help you grow. Thus Spake Zarathustra is notoriously difficult for a modern reader; yet taken as a set of mental exercises, it is guaranteed to transform your thinking by the time you reach the end. Along the way you will have help from the companion, who is always beside the book.
Do you accept the challenge?
What the critics said
Mencken argues that Nietzsche never gave a definite picture of the superman and that commentators who take him as a 'blond beast' brute are wrong, as the three metamorphoses show: the camel is man bearing morality, the lion is the higher man who casts it off and frees the will to power, and the child, innocent and ideally adapted, is the superman.
Mencken argues that Nietzsche never gave a definite picture of the superman and that commentators who take him as a 'blond beast' brute are wrong, as the three metamorphoses show: the camel is man bearing morality, the lion is the higher man who casts it off and frees the will to power, and the child, innocent and ideally adapted, is the superman.
Mencken argues that Nietzsche never gave a definite picture of the superman and that commentators who take him as a 'blond beast' brute are wrong, as the three metamorphoses show: the camel is man bearing morality, the lion is the higher man who casts it off and frees the will to power, and the child, innocent and ideally adapted, is the superman.
Ludovici reads the three metamorphoses as the development of every creator of new values, ending in a second childhood, and argues that it disowns anarchy: only by first bearing the existing law like the camel does the free spirit gain the strength to master the dragon 'Thou shalt' and promulgate new law.