p and proud names--ye and your ruling Will!

Onward the river now carrieth your boat: it MUST carry it. A small
matter if the rough wave foameth and angrily resisteth its keel!

It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and
evil, ye wisest ones: but that Will itself, the Will to Power--the
unexhausted, procreating life-will.

But that ye may understand my gospel of good and evil, for that purpose
will I tell you my gospel of life, and of the nature of all living
things.

The living thing did I follow; I walked in the broadest and narrowest
paths to learn its nature.

With a hundred-faced mirror did I catch its glance when its mouth was
shut, so that its eye might speak unto me. And its eye spake unto me.

But wherever I found living things, there heard I also the language of
obedience. All living things are obeying things.

And this heard I secondly: Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded.
Such is the nature of living things.

This, however, is the third thing which I heard--namely, that commanding
is more difficult than obeying. And not only because the commander
beareth the burden of all obeyers, and because this burden readily
crusheth him:--

An attempt and a risk seemed all commanding unto me; and whenever it
commandeth, the living thing risketh itself thereby.

Yea, even when it commandeth itself, then also must it atone for its
commanding. Of its own law must it become the judge and avenger and
victim.

How doth this happen! so did I ask myself. What persuadeth the living
thing to obey, and command, and even be obedient in commanding?

Hearken now unto my word, ye wisest ones! Test it seriously, whether
I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its
heart!

Wherever I found a living thing, there found I Will to Power; and even
in the will of the servant found I the will to be master.

That to the stronger the weaker shall serve--thereto persuadeth he his
will who would be master over a still weaker one. That delight alone he
is unwilling to forego.

And as the lesser surrendereth himself to the greater that he may have
delight and power over the least of all, so doth even the greatest
surrender himself, and staketh--life, for the sake of power.

It is the surrender of the greatest to run risk and danger, and play
dice for death.

And where there is sacrifice and service and love-glances, there also
is the will to be master. By by-ways doth the