Third Lecture

But Nietzsche could not speak in the forms that the modern spirit of science, the spirit of agnosticism, had brought forth. He had to find another language, a language that pushed into the lyrical-epic-dramatic; he had to find a language that even led out of the state of consciousness in which this modern agnostic spirit of science is conceived. It is as if Nietzsche, everywhere, especially in the most significant parts of his “Zarathustra,” pushed out of ordinary consciousness into a kind of superconsciousness, as if he were seeking a transformation, a metamorphosis of consciousness, in order to be able to live in a world that cannot be reached with ordinary everyday consciousness. It was as if Nietzsche had to overcome the way in which man lives with the world. Zarathustra is not supposed to be a man who follows the pedantic path that modern humanity has become accustomed to, in the measure of time in which the external, one-sided world of perception moves. Zarathustra should become a light-footed spirit who dances away from what otherwise weighs people down in this one-sided world of perception.