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 itself freedom for new creating—that can the might of the lion do.
To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion.
To assume the right to new values—that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
As its holiest, it once loved “Thou shalt”: now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.
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.