Lecture V

And he too, after that conversation, was as if transformed—so greatly changed that the stepbrothers and other kinsmen around him began to think that he had lost his senses. It is sad, they said, for his knowledge was so great. True, he was always very silent but now he has completely lost his senses. He was given up as hopeless. And indeed for days he went about the house as if lost in dream. The Zarathustra-Ego was on the point of leaving this body of Jesus of Nazareth. And his last resolution took the form of impelling him to leave the house as if mechanically and to make his way to John the Baptist with whom he was already acquainted.