ON THE THREE METAMORPHOSES

ON THE THREE METAMORPHOSES

I TELL YOU OF three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit becomes a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

There is much that is difficult for the spirit, the strong reverent spirit that would bear much: but its strength demands the difficult and the most difficult.

What is difficult? so asks the spirit that would bear much; then it kneels down like a camel wanting to be well laden.

What is the most difficult, you heroes? so asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.

Is it not this: to humiliate oneself in order to mortify one’s pride? To exhibit one’s folly in order to mock at one’s wisdom?

Or is it this: to abandon our cause when it celebrates its triumph? To climb high mountains to tempt the tempter?

Or is it this: to feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?

Or is it this: to be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of the deaf, who never hear your requests?

Or is it this: to go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not repulse cold frogs and hot toads?

Or is it this: to love those who despise us, and give one’s hand to the ghost when it is going to frighten us?

All these most difficult things the spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hastens into the desert, so hastens the spirit into its desert.

But in the loneliest wilderness the second metamorphosis occurs: here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master in his own desert.

Here he seeks his last master: he wants to fight him and his last god; for final victory he wants to fight with the great dragon.

Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? “Thou shalt,” is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, “I will.”

“Thou shalt,” lies in his path, sparkling with gold—a beast covered with scales; and on every scale glitters a golden, “Thou shalt!”

The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: “All the value of all things glitters on me.

“All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Truly, there shall be no more ‘I will’.” Thus speaks the dragon.

My brothers, why is there a need of the lion in the spirit? Why is not the beast of burden, which renounces and is reverent, enough?

To create new values-that, even the lion cannot accomplish: but to create freedom for oneself for new creating-that the might of the lion can do.

To create freedom for oneself, and give a sacred “No” even to duty: for that, my brothers, the lion is needed.

To assume the right to new values-that is the most terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit that would bear much. Truly, to him it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.

He once loved “thou shalt” as most sacred: now he must find illusion and arbitrariness even in the most sacred things, that he may steal his freedom from his love: the lion is needed for such prey.

But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child?

The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes-saying.

Yes, for the game of creating, my brothers, a sacred Yes-saying is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been the world’s outcast now conquers his own world.

I have told you of three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra. And at that time he lived in the town that is called: The Motley Cow.1