Key Arguments

• The child is described as innocence and forgetting, indicating a release from ressentiment and from the burden of past commandments.
• Play and ‘self-propelling wheel’ signify spontaneity and internal generative power—the capacity to originate values.
• A ‘sacred Yea-saying’ is necessary for the play of creating; only this Yes can found new values after freedom has been won.
• The spirit that had ‘lost the world’ regains world through this affirmative willing: it now ‘wills will’ and thus reattaches to existence creatively.

Source Quotes

Once it loved, as most sacred for it, ‘Thou shalt’: now it must find delusion and caprice even in the most sacred, that it might seize its freedom from its love: for this predation the lion is needed. But say, my brothers, what can the child yet do that even the lion could not do? Why must the predatory lion yet become a child? Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yea-saying.

Why must the predatory lion yet become a child? Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yea-saying. Yes, for the play of creating, my brothers, a sacred Yea-saying is needed: the spirit now wills will, the one who had lost the world attains world.

Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yea-saying. Yes, for the play of creating, my brothers, a sacred Yea-saying is needed: the spirit now wills will, the one who had lost the world attains world. Three transformations of the spirit have I named for you: how the spirit became a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.— Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Key Concepts

• But say, my brothers, what can the child yet do that even the lion could not do? Why must the predatory lion yet become a child?
• Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yea-saying.
• Yes, for the play of creating, my brothers, a sacred Yea-saying is needed: the spirit now wills will, the one who had lost the world attains world.

Context

Conclusion of the transformation schema: after the lion’s liberation, the child alone can create by an original, playful affirmation.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Affirms Dionysian Yes beyond critique: true creation requires childlike innocence and play; forgetting is an active power that enables new starts.

Zarathustra

Exhorts companions to become children after becoming lions: only in this mood can they inaugurate new tables of value and rejoin the world as creators.