and make friends of deaf people who never hear the wishes?
Or is it: to step into dirty water, if it be the water of truth, and not drive away the cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it: to love those who despise us and to shake hands with the ghost when it! is going to terrify us?
All these heaviest things are taken upon itself by the spirit that is able to bear the load; like the camel which when it is laden hasteth to the desert, the spirit hasteth to its own desert.
In the loneliest desert however cometh the second metamorphosis: there the spirit becometh a lion. Freedom it will take as its prey and be lord in its own desert.
There it seeketh its last lord: to him and its last God it seeketh to be a foe, with the great dragon it seeketh to contend for victory.
What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer willing to call lord and God? Thou ‘shalt’ is the name of the great dragon. But the lion’s spirit saith: ‘I will.’
‘Thou shalt’ besets his way glittering with gold, a pangolin, on each scale there shineth golden ‘Thou shalt.’
Values a thousand years old are shining on these scales, and thus saith the most powerful of all dragons: ‘The value of all things—is shining on me.
