SELF-SURPASSING
Table of Contents
“Will to Truth” makes you ardent.
I call your will as “Will for the thinkableness of all being”!
All being would MAKE you thinkable because you doubt with good reason whether it is already thinkable.
But it shall accommodate and bend itself to you!
So will your will.
This will make your will smooth and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and reflection.
This will make your entire will a Will to Power.
The ignorant people are like a river on which a boat floats.
In the boat has the estimates of value, solemn and disguised.
You have put your will and your valuations on the river of becoming.
it betrayeth unto me an old Will to Power, what is believed by the people as good and evil.
The wisest ones put such guests in this boat and gave them pomp and proud names.
The river now carries your boat.
It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, but that Will itself, the Will to Power—the unexhausted, procreating life-will.
Wherever I found living things, there heard I also the language of obedience.
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All living things are obeying things.
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Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded.
- Commanding is more difficult than obeying.
This is because:
- the commander bears the burden of all obeyers, and
- this burden readily crusheth him
What persuadeth the living thing to obey, command, and be obedient in commanding?
Every living thing has a Will to Power.
Even in the will of the servant found the will to be master.
The weaker shall serve the stronger.
This persuades the stronger to be master over a weaker one.
- He is unwilling to forego that delight.
The lesser surrenders himself to the greater so that the lesser can have power over the least of all.
Likewise, the greatest surrenders 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.
Where there is sacrifice and service and love-glances, there also is the will to be master.
The weaker then slinks into the fortress through by-ways and into the heart of the mightier one to steal power.
Life herself revealed this secret to me.
Behold, I am that WHICH MUST EVER SURPASS ITSELF.
You can call it:
- will to procreation, or
- impulse towards a goal, towards the higher, remoter, more manifold
Rather would I succumb than disown this one thing; and verily, where there is succumbing and leaf-falling, lo, there doth Life sacrifice itself—for power!
That I have to be struggle, and becoming, and purpose, and cross-purpose—ah, he who divineth my will, divineth well also on what CROOKED paths it hath to tread!
Whatever I create, and however much I love it,—soon must I be adverse to it, and to my love: so willeth my will.
And even thou, discerning one, art only a path and footstep of my will: verily, my Will to Power walketh even on the feet of thy Will to Truth!
He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula: ‘Will to existence’: that will—doth not exist!
For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence—how could it still strive for existence!
Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to Life, but—so teach I thee—Will to Power!
Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one; but out of the very reckoning speaketh—the Will to Power!”—
Thus did Life once teach me: and thereby, ye wisest ones, do I solve you the riddle of your hearts.
Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting—it doth not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew.
With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power, ye valuing ones: and that is your secret love, and the sparkling, trembling, and overflowing of your souls.
But a stronger power groweth out of your values, and a new surpassing: by it breaketh egg and egg-shell.
And he who hath to be a creator in good and evil—verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces.
Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good: that, however, is the creating good.—
Let us SPEAK thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad. To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous.
And let everything break up which—can break up by our truths! Many a house is still to be built!—
Chapter 35: THE SUBLIME ONES
Calm is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hideth droll monsters!
Unmoved is my depth: but it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and laughters.
A sublime one saw I to-day, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: Oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness!
With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their breath: thus did he stand, the sublime one, and in silence:
O’erhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn raiment; many thorns also hung on him—but I saw no rose.
Not yet had he learned laughing and beauty. Gloomy did this hunter return from the forest of knowledge.
From the fight with wild beasts returned he home: but even yet a wild beast gazeth out of his seriousness—an unconquered wild beast!
As a tiger doth he ever stand, on the point of springing; but I do not like those strained souls; ungracious is my taste towards all those self-engrossed ones.
And ye tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting!
Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and scales and weigher!
Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, then only will his beauty begin—and then only will I taste him and find him savoury.
And only when he turneth away from himself will he o’erleap his own shadow—and verily! into HIS sun.
Far too long did he sit in the shade; the cheeks of the penitent of the spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expectations.
Contempt is still in his eye, and loathing hideth in his mouth. To be sure, he now resteth, but he hath not yet taken rest in the sunshine.
As the ox ought he to do; and his happiness should smell of the earth, and not of contempt for the earth.
As a white ox would I like to see him, which, snorting and lowing, walketh before the ploughshare: and his lowing should also laud all that is earthly!
Dark is still his countenance; the shadow of his hand danceth upon it. O’ershadowed is still the sense of his eye.
His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing obscureth the doer. Not yet hath he overcome his deed.
To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now do I want to see also the eye of the angel.
Also his hero-will hath he still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he be, and not only a sublime one:—the ether itself should raise him, the will-less one!
He hath subdued monsters, he hath solved enigmas. But he should also redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children should he transform them.
As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealousy; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty.
Verily, not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear, but in beauty! Gracefulness belongeth to the munificence of the magnanimous.
His arm across his head: thus should the hero repose; thus should he also surmount his repose.
But precisely to the hero is BEAUTY the hardest thing of all. Unattainable is beauty by all ardent wills.
A little more, a little less: precisely this is much here, it is the most here.
To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will: that is the hardest for all of you, ye sublime ones!
When power becometh gracious and descendeth into the visible—I call such condescension, beauty.
And from no one do I want beauty so much as from thee, thou powerful one: let thy goodness be thy last self-conquest.
All evil do I accredit to thee: therefore do I desire of thee the good.
Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws!
The virtue of the pillar shalt thou strive after: more beautiful doth it ever become, and more graceful—but internally harder and more sustaining—the higher it riseth.
Yea, thou sublime one, one day shalt thou also be beautiful, and hold up the mirror to thine own beauty.
Then will thy soul thrill with divine desires; and there will be adoration even in thy vanity!
For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero hath abandoned it, then only approacheth it in dreams—the superhero.—