Nietzsche’s handling of this paradox is one of the significant movements of his thought. To understand it we must go back a little. It is not the question of the personality of Jesus, of the motives that were clearly present to his own consciousness that Nietzsche would discuss. In general, he is completely indifferent to the kind of evidence furnished by self-analysis respecting the motives of conduct and the ground of opinion. Even those whose powers of analysis might be supposed to give them a right to speak--the great philosophers and lovers of truth--are to Nietzsche deceivers or self-deceived. “What tempts me to look upon all philosophers half with mistrust, half with amusement is not that one discovers again and again what innocents they are, how often and how easily mistaken and misled, not, in a word, their prattle and childishness. It is rather that, in spite of the great and virtuous noise made by the whole company the moment the question of truth is even remotely touched on, they do not deal ingenuously with us. They all pose as believing that they have arrived at their own opinions by the self-development of a cool pure and divinely impassible dialectic (in contrast with the mystics of all shades, who, honest fools, _will_ speak of Inspiration). At bottom, however, it is some idea loved at first sight, most frequently some heart’s desire made abstract and well refined that they defend with reasons found for the purpose. Advocates denying the name, cunning special pleaders for their prejudices, they christen these _The Truth_.” If then the lover of truth cannot tell the truth about himself, if the cool thinker is unable to reveal the grounds of his thought, how much less can the man of heart tell what is at the bottom of his heart, the man of passion tell where his deepest passion lies? It remains for Nietzsche to make good these short-comings. And Nietzsche makes them good in a way that lacks neither simplicity nor decision. He lays it down that there is one motive to which all others reduce, and to which everything that lives instinctively reacts. This motive is not the mere desire to preserve oneself, the desire that many have supposed sufficient to explain even the phenomenon of evolution. It goes beyond self-defense to strive after the maximum of aggression. Nietzsche calls it “der Wille zur Macht”--the Lust of Power. It is this that makes the world dance, that makes the brute prepare the way for man, that drives man to produce the superman. It is consequently this that compels the thinker to his thought, the meek to his resignation, the crucified to his cross.