Third Lecture

But Nietzsche was still so strong inside that he felt this inflammation of his soul; he was still so strong inside that he felt the urge to add inner experience to his outer perception. And by gathering his last strength, so to speak, to overcome the one-sided world of perception, to arrive at the experience that, together with this external perception, gives full reality, this striving contains what lived out in him in his third epoch, when he wrote his “Zarathustra,” that “Zarathustra” which can be characterized by Nietzsche's statement: Now one has become human, but as a human one is condemned to suffer from the world, for the world gives one a one-sidedness, the world does not fulfill one. One has become human and stands in the world. But what does it mean to be human if the world does not trigger in man that which makes him a being, toward which his deeper powers themselves must strive? — And so the thought pressed out of Nietzsche's soul: Therefore, man must not remain human, for if he remains human, he hollows himself out, he must drown in pain. Man must become superhuman. Man, who cannot communicate with his essence in the world, must overcome himself. There must be a bridge, as there is from worm to man, so from man to superman. Nietzsche wanted to break this human shell, so that from this breaking could emerge what could now live in harmony with the world from the deepest driving forces of humanity. And Zarathustra was to be the teacher and bearer of this superhuman idea.