OF THREE metamorphoses of the spirit do I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong reverent spirit that would bear much: for the heavy and the heaviest longs its strength.
What is heavy? so asks the spirit that would bear much, and then kneels down like the camel, and wants to be well laden.
What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon me and exult 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 desert our cause when it triumphs? 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 in one's soul?
Or is it this: To be sick and send away the comforters, and to 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 avoid cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and to give one's hand to the phantom who tries to frighten us?
All these heaviest things the spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: like the camel, that, when laden, hastens into the desert, so speeds the spirit into its desert.
But in the loneliest desert happens the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becomes a lion; he will seize his freedom and be master in his own wilderness.
Here he seeks his last master: he wants to fight him and his last God; for victory he will struggle with the great dragon.
Who is the great dragon which the spirit no longer wants to call Lord and God? "Thou-shalt," is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion says, "I will."
"Thou-shalt," lies in his path, sparkling with gold- a scale-covered beast; and on each 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 values of all things- glitter on me.
All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily, there shall be no more 'I will' ." Thus speaks the dragon.
My brothers, why does the spirit need the lion? Why is the beast of burden, which renounces and is reverent, not enough?
To create new values- that, even the lion cannot accomplish: but to create for oneself freedom for new creating- that freedom the might of the lion can seize.
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 load-bearing and reverent spirit. To such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
He once loved "Thou-shalt" as the most sacred: now is he forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the most sacred things, that freedom from his love may be his prey: the lion is needed for such prey.
But tell me, my brothers, what the child can do, which 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-rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes.
For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred Yes is needed: the spirit now wills his own will; the world's outcast now conquers his own world.
Of three metamorphoses of the spirit I have told you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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Dust fills my eyes / Clouds roll by / and I roll with them / Centuries cry / Orders fly / and I fall again
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