text: Notwithstanding the earnestness with which some have interpreted this metaphor, Nietzsche is being highly ironical with us; for him the harshest reality is not that of the danger posed by the highest to the mediocre, of the eagle devouringthe lambs, but that posed by the herd to those who approach nearer to greatness: the eagle is rather less sovereign than Nietzsche’s image first suggests.50 If “the herd” describes those who “need” laws and who cling to a customary morality, this dependence possesses a double significance. There are the costs of such bondage to the bearer, doomed never to know the joys of freedom— although, frankly, Nietzsche does not stop to regret this.51 Much more his characteristic concern is how such dependence is inevitably betrayed in an instinct to confine all others within the limits it has set for itself.