In section 19 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche posits the eye-opening idea that “freedom of the will” is not as free (or as innocuous) as many of us would like to believe. Nietzsche writes: “‘Freedom of the will’ is essentially the affect of superiority in relation to him who must obey: ‘I am free, “he” must obey’.” In other words, every act of will requires a corresponding act of obedience, even if that obedience means little more than “putting into motion our arms and legs,” as he writes. The notion that there is “freedom” at all, Nietzsche argues, is a falsehood; it is simply the domination of one will over another, which, of course, is a manifestation of the will to power. To put it yet another way, every act of will comes at a cost. “In all willing,” Nietzsche writes in the same aphorism, “it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many ‘souls’.”