That it is exceedingly illuminating to substitute _power_ for individual "happiness" (after which every living organism is said to strive): "It strives after power, after _more_ power";--happiness is only a symptom of the feeling of power attained, a consciousness of difference (it does not strive after happiness: but happiness steps in when the object is attained, after which the organism has striven: happiness is an accompanying, not an actuating factor); That all motive force is the will to power; that there is no other force, either physical, dynamic, or psychic. In our science, where the concept cause and effect is reduced to a relationship of complete equilibrium, and in which it seems desirable for the _same_ quantum of force to be found on either side, _all idea of a motive power is absent_: we only apprehend results, and we call these equal from the point of view of their content of force.... It is a matter of mere experience that change never ceases: at bottom we have not the smallest grounds for assuming that any one particular change must follow upon any other. On the contrary, any state which has been attained would seem almost forced to maintain itself intact if it had not within itself a capacity for not desiring to maintain itself.... Spinoza's proposition concerning "self-preservation" ought as a matter of fact to put a stop to change. But the proposition is false; the contrary is true. In all living organisms it can be clearly shown that they do everything not to remain as they are, but to become greater.... 689. _"Will to power" and causality._--From a psychological point of view the idea of "cause" is our feeling of power in the act which is called willing--our concept effect is the superstition that this feeling of power is itself the force which moves things.... A state which accompanies an event and is already an effect of that event is deemed "sufficient cause" of the latter; the tense relationship of our feeling of power (pleasure as the feeling of power) and of an obstacle being overcome--are these things illusions? If we translate the notion "cause" back into the only sphere which is known to us, and out of which we have taken it, we cannot imagine _any change_ in which the will to power is not inherent. We do not know how to account for any change which is not a _trespassing_ of one power on another. Mechanics only show us the results, and then only in images (movement is a figure of speech); gravitation itself has no mechanical cause, because it is itself the first cause of mechanical results. The will to _accumulate force_ is confined to the phenomenon of life, to nourishment, to procreation, to inheritance, to society, states, customs, authority. Should we not be allowed to assume that this will is the motive power also of chemistry?--and of the cosmic order?