Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/151

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

your will. Smooth shall it become and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and reflection.

That is your entire will, you wisest ones, as a Will to Power; and even when you speak of good and evil, and of estimates of value.

You would still create a world before which you can bow the knee: such is your ultimate hope and ecstasy.

The ignorant, to be sure, the people- they are like a river on which a boat floats along: and in the boat sit the estimates of value, solemn and disguised.

Your will and your valuations have you put on the river of becoming; it betrays to me an old Will to Power, what is believed by the people as good and evil.

It was you, you wisest ones, who put such guests in this boat, and gave them pomp and proud names- you and your ruling Will!

Onward the river now carries your boat: it must carry it. A small matter if the rough wave foams and angrily resists its keel!

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

But that you 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 to me. And its eye spoke to me.

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