Of Self-Overcoming
What urges you on and arouses your ardour, you wisest of men, do you call it "will to truth"?
Will to the conceivability of all being: that is what I call your will!
You first want to make all being conceivable: for, with a healthy mistrust, you
doubt whether it is in fact conceivable.
But it must bend and accommodate itself to you! Thus will your will have it. It must become
smooth and subject to the mind as the mind's mirror and reflection.
That is your entire will, you wisest men; it is a will to power; and that is so even when
you talk of good and evil and of the assessment of values.
You want to create the world before which you can kneel: this is your ultimate hope and
intoxication.
The ignorant, to be sure, the people -- they are like a river down which a boat swims: and in
the boat, solemn and disguised, sit the assessments of value.
You put your will and your values upon the river of becoming; what the people believe to be
good and evil betrays to me an ancient will to power.
It was you, wisest men, who put such passengers in this boat and gave them splendour and
proud names -- you and your ruling will!
Now the river bears your boat along: it has to bear it. It is of small account if the breaking
wave foams and angrily opposes its keel!
It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, you wisest men, it
is that will itself, the will to power, the unexhausted, procreating life-will.
But that you may understand my teaching about good and evil, I shall relate to you my
teaching about life and about the nature of all living creatures.
I have followed the living creature, I have followed the greatest and the smallest paths, that
I might understand its nature.
I caught its glance in a hundredfold mirror when its mouth was closed, that its eye might speak to me.
And its eye did speak to me.
But wherever I found living creatures, there too I heard the language of obedience. All
living creatures are obeying creatures.
And this is the second thing: he who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature
of living creatures.
But this is the third thing I heard: that commanding is more difficult than obeying. And not
only because the commander bears the burden of all who obey, and that this burden can easily crush him.
In all commanding there appeared to me to be an experiment and a risk: and the living
creature always risks himself when he commands.
Yes, even when he commands himself: then also must he make amends for his commanding. He must
become judge and avenger and victim of his own law.
How has this come about? thus I asked myself. What persuades the living creature to obey and
to command and to practise obedience even in commanding?
Listen now to my teaching, you wisest men! Test in earnest whether I have crept into the heart
of life itself and down to the roots of its heart!
Where I found a living creature, there I found will to power; and even in the will of the
servant I found the will to be master.
The will of the weaker persuades it to serve the stronger; its will wants to be master
over those weaker still: this delight alone it is unwilling to forgo.
And as the lesser surrenders to the greater, that it may have delight and power over the
least of all, so the greatest, too, surrenders and for the sake of power stakes -- life.
The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death.
And where sacrifice and service and loving glances are, there too is will to be master. There
the weaker steals by secret paths into the castle and even into the heart of the more powerful -- and steals the power.
And life itself told me this secret: "Behold," it said, "I am that which must overcome
itself again and again.
"To be sure, you call it will to procreate or impulse towards a goal, towards the higher,
more distant, more manifold: but all this is one and one secret.
"I would rather perish than renounce this one thing; and truly, where there is perishing and
the falling of leaves, behold, there life sacrifices itself -- for the sake of power!
"That I have to be struggle and becoming and goal and conflict of goals: ah, he who divines
my will surely divines, too, along what crooked paths it has to go!
"Whatever I create and however much I love it -- soon I have to oppose it and my love: thus
will my will have it.
"And you too, enlightened man, are only a path and footstep of my will: truly, my will to power
walks with the feet of your will to truth!
"He who shot the doctrine 'will to existence' at truth certainly did not hit the truth: this
will -- does not exist!
"For what does not exist cannot will; but that which is in existence, how could it still want
to come to existence?
"Only where life is, there is also will: not will to life, but -- so I teach you -- will to
power!
"The living creature values many things higher than life itelf; yet out of this evaluation
itself speaks -- the will to power!"
Thus life once taught me: and with this teaching do I solve the riddles of your hearts,
you wisest men.
Truly, I say to you: Unchanging good and evil does not exist! From out of themselves they
must overcome themselves again and again.
You exert power with your values and doctrines of good and evil, you assessors of values; and
this is your hidden love and the glittering, trembling, and overflowing of your souls.
But a mightier power and a new overcoming grow from out your values: egg and egg-shell
break against them.
And he who has to be a creator in good and evil, truly, has first to be a destroyer and
break values.
Thus the greatest evil belongs with the greatest good: this, however, is the creative
good.
Let us speak of this, you wisest men, even if it is a bad thing. To be silent is
worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous.
And let everything that can break upon our truths -- break! There is many a house still to
build!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.