motif Spirit becomes camel (bearing 'thou shalt'), lion (the sacred 'I will', no), and child (innocence, a new beginning, the sacred Yea).
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.
States the whole scheme of the chapter: camel, lion, child.
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 first stage: the reverent spirit that kneels and takes on the heaviest burdens.
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,…
The second stage, in the loneliest wilderness.
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 third and final stage.
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 best-known formulation of the child stage.
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 scheme is restated to close the speech.
Read in the book →And now, ye famous wise ones, I would have you finally throw off entirely the skin of the lion! The skin of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, and the dishevelled locks of the investigator, the searcher, and the…
The lion's skin and the lion-will recall the lion stage of the spirit, which the famous wise ones only pretend to wear.
Read in the book →And I answered: “I am ashamed.” Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “Thou must yet become a child, and be without shame. The pride of youth is still upon thee; late hast thou become young: but he who…
The voice demands that he become a child, without shame, surmounting even his youth.
Read in the book →One must learn to love oneself—thus do I teach—with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving about. Such roving about christeneth itself “brotherly love”; with these words…
The reverent load-bearer kneeling to be laden recalls the camel.
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.
Maps camel, lion and child onto man, higher man and 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.
Reads camel, lion and child as stages in the life of every creator of values.
Ludovici says the sublime ones are a type Nietzsche did not wholly dislike but who take life too seriously and never surmount the camel stage; real greatness is to speak of lofty things without being oppressed by them, and Nietzsche breaks old things not with the anarchist's irreverence but with the fingers of an artist at ease with beauty, guided by his own taste.
Places the sublime ones at the camel stage.