The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV

636.

The physicists believe in a "true world" after their own kind; a fixed systematising of atoms to perform necessary movements, and holding good equally of all creatures, so that, according to them, the "world of appearance" reduces itself to the side of general and generally-needed Being, which is accessible to every one according to his kind (accessible and also adjusted,—made "subjective"). But here they are in error. The atom which they postulate is arrived at by the logic of that perspective of consciousness; it is in itself therefore a subjective fiction. This picture of the world which they project is in no way essentially different from the subjective picture: the only difference is, that it is composed simply with more extended senses, but certainly with our senses.... And in the end, without knowing it, they left something out of the constellation: precisely the necessary perspective factor, by means of which every centre of power—and not man alone—constructs the rest of the world from its point of view—that is to say, measures it, feels it, and moulds it according to its degree of strength....They forgot to reckon with this perspective-fixing power, in "true being,"—or, in school-terms, subject-being. They suppose that this was "evolved" and added;—but even the chemical investigator needs it: it is indeed specific Being, which determines action and reaction according to circumstances.

Perspectivity is only a complex form, of specificness. My idea is that every specific body strives to become master of all space, and to extend its power (its will to power), and to thrust back everything that resists it. But inasmuch as it is continually meeting the same endeavours on the part of other bodies, it concludes by coming to terms with those (by "combining" with those) which are sufficiently related to it—and thus they conspire together for power. And the process continues.

637.

Even in the inorganic world all that concerns an atom of energy is its immediate neighbourhood: distant forces balance each other. Here is the root of perspectivity, and it explains why a living organism is "egoistic" to the core.

638.

Granting that the world disposed of a quantum of force, it is obvious that any transposition of force to any place would affect the whole system—thus, besides the causality of sequence, there would also be a dependence, contiguity, and coincidence.

639.

The only possible way of upholding the sense of the concept "God" would be: to make Him not the motive force, but the condition of maximum power, an epoch; a point in the further development of the Will to Power; by means of which subsequent evolution just as much as former evolution—up to Him—could be explained.

Viewed mechanically, the energy of collective Becoming remains constant; regarded from the economical standpoint, it ascends to its zenith and then recedes therefrom in order to remain eternally rotatory.This "Will to Power" expresses itself in the interpretation in the manner in which the strength is used.—The conversion of energy into life; "life in its highest power" thenceforward appears as the goal.The same amount of energy, at different stages of development, means different things.

That which determines growth in Life is the economy which becomes ever more sparing and methodical, which achieves ever more and more with a steadily decreasing amount of energy....The ideal is the principle of the least possible expense....

The only thing that is proved is that the world is not striving towards a state of stability. Consequently its zenith must not be conceived as a state of absolute equilibrium....

The dire necessity of the same things happening in the course of the world, as in all other things, is not an eternal determinism reigning over all phenomena, but merely the expression of the fact that the impossible is not possible; that a given force cannot be different from that given force; that a given quantity of resisting force does not manifest itself otherwise than in conformity with its degree of strength;—to speak of events as being necessary is tautological.

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2.The Will to Power as Life.

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(a) The Organic Process.

640.

Man imagines that he was present at the generation of the organic world: what was there to be observed, with the eyes and the touch, in regard to these processes? How much of it can be put into round numbers? What rules are noticeable in the movements? Thus, man would fain arrange all phenomena as if they were for the eye and for the touch, as if they were forms of motion: he will discover formules wherewith to simplify the unwieldy mass of these experiences.

The reduction of all phenomena to the level of men with senses and with mathematics. It is a matter of making an inventory of human experiences: granting that man, or rather the human eye and the ability to form concepts, have been the eternal witnesses of all things.

641.

A plurality of forces bound by a common nutritive process we call "Life."To this nutritive process all so-called feeling, thinking, and imagining belong as means—that is to say, (1) in the form of opposing other forces; (2) in the form of an adjustment of other forces according to mould and rhythm; (3) the form of a valuation relative to assimilation and excretion.

642.

The bond between the inorganic and the organic world must lie in the repelling power exercised by every atom of energy. "Life" might be defined as a lasting form of force-establishing processes, in which the various contending forces, on their part, grow unequally. To what extent does counter-strife exist even in obedience? Individual power is by no means surrendered through it. In the same way, there exists in the act of commanding, an acknowledgment of the fact that the absolute power of the adversary has not been overcome, absorbed, or dissipated. "Obedience," and "command," are forms of the game of war.

643.

The Will to Power interprets (an organ in the process of formation has to be interpreted): it defines, it determines gradations, differences of power. Mere differences of power could not be aware of each other as such: something must be there which will grow, and which interprets all other things that would do the same, according to the value of the latter. In sooth, all interpretation is but a means in itself to become master of something. (Continual interpretation is the first principle of the organic process.)

644.

Greater complexity, sharp differentiation, the contiguity of the developed organs and functions, with the disappearance of intermediate members—if that is perfection, then there is a Will to Power apparent in the organic process by means of whose dominating, shaping, and commanding forces it is continually increasing the sphere of its power, and persistently simplifying things within that sphere, it grows imperatively.

"Spirit" is only a means and an instrument in the service of higher life, in the service of the elevation of life.

645.

"Heredity," as something quite incomprehensible, cannot be used as an explanation, but only as a designation for the identification of a problem.And the same holds good of "adaptability." As a matter of fact, the account of morphology, even supposing it were perfect, explains nothing, it merely describes an enormous fact. How a given organ gets to be used for any particular purpose is not explained. There is just as little explained in regard to these things by the assumption of causæ finales as by the assumption of causæ efficientes. The concept "causa" is only a means of expression, no more; a means of designating a thing.

646.

They are analogies; for instance, our memory may suggest another kind of memory which makes itself felt in heredity, development, and forms. Our inventive and experimentative powers suggest another kind of inventiveness in the application of instruments to new ends, etc.

That which we call our "consciousness" is quite guiltless of any of the essential processes of our preservation and growth; and no human brain could be so subtle as to construct anything more than a machine—to which every organic process is infinitely superior.

647.

Against Darwinism.—The use of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! During the greater part of the time occupied in the formation of a certain quality, this quality does not help to preserve the individual; it is of no use to him, and particularly not in his struggle with external circumstances and foes.

What is ultimately "useful"?It is necessary to ask, "Useful for what"?

For instance, that which promotes the lasting powers of the individual might be unfavourable to his strength or his beauty; that which preserves him might at the same time fix him and keep him stable throughout development. On the other hand, a deficiency, a state of degeneration, may be of the greatest possible use, inasmuch as it acts as a stimulus to other organs. In the same way, a state of need may be a condition of existence, inasmuch as it reduces an individual to that modicum of means which, though it keeps him together, does not allow him to squander his strength. —The individual himself is the struggle of parts (for nourishment, space, etc.): his development involves the triumph, the predominance, of isolated parts; the wasting away, or the "development into organs," of other parts.

The influence of "environment" is nonsensically overrated in Darwin, the essential factor in the process of life is precisely the tremendous inner power to shape and to create forms, which merely uses, exploits "environment."

The new forms built up by this inner power are not produced with a view to any end; but, in the struggle between the parts, a new form does not exist long without becoming related to some kind of semi-utility, and, according to its use, develops itself ever more and more perfectly.

648.

"Utility" in respect of the acceleration of the speed of evolution, is a different kind of "utility" from that which is understood to mean the greatest possible stability and staying power of the evolved creature.

649.

"Useful" in the sense of Darwinian biology means: that which favours a thing in its struggle with others. But in my opinion the feeling of being surcharged, the feeling accompanying an increase in strength, quite apart from the utility of the struggle, is the actual progress: from these feelings the will to war is first derived.

650.

Physiologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength: "self-preservation" is only one of the results thereof. —Let us beware of superfluous teleological principles! —one of which is the whole concept of "self-preservation."[4]

651.

The most-fundamental—and most primeval activity of a protoplasm cannot be ascribed to a will to self-preservation, for it absorbs an amount of material which is absurdly out of proportion with the needs of its preservation: and what is more, it does not "preserve itself" in the process, but actually falls to pieces.... The instinct which rules here, must account for this total absence in the organism of a desire to preserve itself: hunger is already an interpretation based upon the observation of a more or less complex organism (hunger is a specialised and later form of the instinct; it is an expression of the system of divided labour, in the service of a higher instinct which rules the whole).

652.

It is just as impossible to regard hunger as the primum mobile, as it is to take self-preservation to be so. Hunger, considered as the result of insufficient nourishment, means hunger as the result of a will to power which can no longer dominate It is not a question of replacing a loss, it is only later on, as the result of the division of labour, when the Will to Power has discovered other and quite different ways of gratifying itself, that the appropriating lust of the organism is reduced to hunger—to the need of replacing what has been lost.

653.

We can but laugh at the false "Altruism" of biologists: propagation among the amœbæ appears as a process of jetsam, as an advantage to them.It is an excretion of useless matter.

654.

The division of a protoplasm into two takes place when its power is no longer sufficient to subjugate the matter it has appropriated: procreation is the result of impotence.

In the cases in which the males seek the females and become one with them, procreation is the result of hunger.

655.

The weaker vessel is driven to the stronger from a need of nourishment; it desires to get under it, if possible to become one with it. The stronger, on the contrary, defends itself from others; it refuses to perish in this way; it prefers rather to split itself into two or more parts in the process of growing. One may conclude that the greater the urgency seems to become one with something else, the more weakness in some form is present. The greater the tendency to variety, difference, inner decay, the more strength is actually to hand.

The instinct to cleave to something, and the instinct to repel something, are in the inorganic as in the organic world, the uniting bond.The whole distinction is a piece of hasty judgment.

The will to power in every combination of forces, defending itself against the stronger and coming down unmercifully upon the weaker, is more correct.

N. B. All processes may be regarded as "beings".

656.

The will to power can manifest itself only against obstacles; it therefore goes in search of what resists it—this is the primitive tendency of the protoplasm when it extends its pseudopodia and feels about it. The act of appropriation and assimilation is, above all, the result of a desire to overpower, a process of forming, of additional building and rebuilding, until at last the subjected creature has become completely a part of the superior creature's sphere of power, and has increased the latter. —If this process of incorporation does not succeed, then the whole organism falls to pieces; and the separation occurs as the result of the will to power: in order to prevent the escape of that which has been subjected, the will to power falls into two wills (under some circumstances without even abandoning completely its relation to the two).

"Hunger" is only a more narrow adaptation, once the fundamental instinct of power has won power of a more abstract kind.

657.

What is "passive"?

To be hindered in the outward movement of grasping: it is thus an act of resistance and reaction.

What is "active"?

To stretch out for power.

"Nutrition"...

Is only a derived phenomenon; the primitive form of it was the will to stuff everything inside one's own skin.

"Procreation"...

Only derived; originally, in those cases In which one will was unable to organise the collective mass it had appropriated, an opposing will came into power, which undertook to effect the separation and establish a new centre of organisation, after a struggle with the original will.

"Pleasure"...

Is a feeling of power (presupposing the existence of pain).

658.

(1) The organic functions shown to be but forms of the fundamental will, the will to power,—and buds thereof.

(2) The will to power specialises itself as will to nutrition, to property, to tools, to servants (obedience), and to rulers: the body as an example. —The stronger will directs the weaker. There is no other form of causality than that of will to will. It is not to be explained mechanically.

(3) Thinking, feeling, willing, in all living organisms. What is a desire if it be not: a provocation of the feeling of power by an obstacle (or, better still, by rhythmical obstacles and resisting forces)—so that it surges through it?Thus in all pleasure pain is understood.—If the pleasure is to be very great, the pains preceding it must have been very long, and the whole bow of life must have been strained to the utmost.

(4) Intellectual functions.The will to shaping, forming, and making like, etc.

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(b) Man.

659.

With the body as clue.—Granting that the "soul" was only an attractive and mysterious thought, from which philosophers rightly, but reluctantly, separated themselves—that which they have since learnt to put in its place is perhaps even more attractive and even more mysterious. The human body, in which the whole of the most distant and most recent past of all organic life once more becomes living and corporal, seems to flow through, this past and right over it like a huge and inaudible torrent; the body is a more wonderful thought than the old "soul." In all ages the body, as our actual property, as our most certain being, in short, as our ego, has been more earnestly believed in than the spirit (or the "soul," or the subject, as the school jargon now calls it). It has never occurred to any one to regard his stomach as a strange or a divine stomach; but that there is a tendency and a predilection in man to regard all his thoughts as "inspired," all his values as "imparted to him by a God," all his instincts as dawning activities—this is proved by the evidence of every age in man's history. Even now, especially among artists, there may very often be noticed a sort of wonder, and a deferential hesitation to decide, when the question occurs to them, by what means they achieved their happiest work, and from which world the creative thought came down to them: when they question in this way, they are possessed by a feeling of guilelessness and childish shyness. They dare not say: "That came from me; it was my hand which threw that die." Conversely, even those philosophers and theologians, who in their logic and piety found the most imperative reasons for regarding their body as a deception (and even as a deception overcome and disposed of), could not help recognising the foolish fact that the body still remained: and the most unexpected proofs of this are to be found partly in Pauline and partly in Vedantic philosophy. But what does strength of faith ultimately mean? Nothing! —A strong faith might also be a foolish faith! —There is food for reflection.

And supposing the faith in the body were ultimately but the result of a conclusion; supposing it were a false conclusion, as idealists declare it is, would it not then involve some doubt concerning the trustworthiness of the spirit itself which thus causes us to draw wrong conclusions?

Supposing the plurality of things, and space, and time, and motion (and whatever the other first principles of a belief in the body may be) were errors—what suspicions would not then be roused against the spirit which led us to form such first principles?Let it suffice that the belief in the body is, at any rate for the present, a much stronger belief than the belief in the spirit, and he who would fain undermine it assails the authority of the spirit most thoroughly in so doing!

660.

The Body as an Empire.

The aristocracy in the body, the majority of the rulers (the fight between the cells and the tissues).

Slavery and the division of labour: the higher type alone possible through the subjection of the lower to a function.

Pleasure and pain, not contraries.The feeling of power.

"Nutrition" only a result of the insatiable lust of appropriation in the Will to Power.

"Procreation": this is the decay which supervenes when the ruling cells are too weak to organise appropriated material.

It is the moulding force which will have a continual supply of new material (more "force"). The masterly construction of an organism out of an egg.

"The mechanical interpretation": recognises only quantities: but the real energy is in the quality.Mechanics can therefore only describe processes; it cannot explain them.

"Purpose."We should start out from the "sagacity" of plants.

The concept of "meliorism": not only greater complexity, but greater power (it need not be only greater masses).

Conclusion concerning the evolution of man: the road to perfection lies in the bringing forth of the most powerful individuals, for whose use the great masses would be converted into mere tools (that is to say, into the most intelligent and flexible tools possible).

661.

Why is all activity, even that of a sense, associated with pleasure? Because, before the activity was possible, an obstacle or a burden was done away with. Or, rather, because all action is a process of overcoming, of becoming master of, and of increasing the feeling of power?The pleasure of thought. Ultimately it is not only the feeling of power, but also the pleasure of creating and of contemplating the creation: for all activity enters our consciousness in the form of "works."

662.

Creating is an act of selecting and of finishing the thing selected.(In every act of the will, this is the essential element.)

663.

All phenomena which are the result of intentions may be reduced to the intention of increasing power.

664.

When we do anything, we are conscious of a feeling of strength; we often have this sensation before the act—that is to say, while imagining the thing to do (as, for instance, at the sight of an enemy, of an obstacle, which we feel equal to): it is always an accompanying sensation.Instinctively we think that this feeling of strength is the cause of the action, that it is the "motive force."Our belief in causation is the belief in force and its effect; it is a transcript of our experience: in which we identify force and the feeling of force.—Force, however, never moves things; the strength which is conscious "does not set the muscles moving.""Of such a process we have no experience, no idea.""We experience as little concerning force as a motive power, as concerning the necessity of a movement." Force is said to be the constraining element! "All we know is that one thing follows another;—we know nothing of either compulsion or arbitrariness in regard to the one following the other. Causality is first invented by thinking compulsion into the sequence of processes. A certain "understanding" of the thing is the result—that is to say, we humanise the process a little, we make it more "familiar"; the familiar is the known habitual fact of human compulsion associated with the feeling of force.

665.

I have the intention of extending my arm; taking it for granted that I know as little of the physiology of the human body and of the mechanical laws of its movements as the man in the street, what could there be more vague, more bloodless, more uncertain than this intention compared with what follows it? And supposing I were the astutest of mechanics, and especially conversant with the formulæ which are applicable in this case, I should not be able to extend my arm one whit the better. Our "knowledge" and our "action" in this case lie coldly apart: as though in two different regions. —Again: Napoleon carries out a plan of campaign—what does that mean? In this case, everything concerning the consummation of the campaign is known, because everything must be done through words of command: but even here subordinates are taken for granted, who apply and adapt the general plan to the particular emergency, to the degree of strength, etc.

666.

For ages we have always ascribed the value of an action, of a character, of an existence, to the intention, to the purpose for which it was done, acted, or lived: this primeval idiosyncrasy of taste ultimately takes a dangerous turn provided the lack of intention and purpose in all phenomena comes ever more to the front in consciousness. With it a general depreciation of all values seems to be preparing: "All is without sense." —This melancholy phrase means: "All sense lies in the intention, and if the intention is absolutely lacking, then sense must be lacking too." In conformity with this valuation, people were forced to place the value of life in a a life after death, or in the progressive development of ideas, or of mankind, or of the people, or of man to superman; but in this way the progressus in infinitum of purpose had been reached: it was ultimately necessary to find one's self a place in the process of the world (perhaps with the disdæmonistic outlook, it was a process which led to nonentity).

In regard to this point, "purpose" needs a somewhat more severe criticism: it ought to be recognised that an action is never caused by a purpose; that an object and the means thereto are interpretations, by means of which certain points in a phenomena are selected and accentuated, at the cost of other, more numerous, points, that every time something is done for a purpose, something fundamentally different, and yet other things happen; that in regard to the action done with a purpose, the case is the same as with the so-called purposefulness of the heat which is radiated from the sun: the greater part of the total sum is squandered; a portion of it, which is scarcely worth reckoning, has a "purpose," has "sense"; that an "end" with its "means" is an absurdly indefinite description, which indeed may be able to command as a precept, as "will," but presupposes a system of obedient and trained instruments, which, in the place of the indefinite, puts forward a host of determined entities (i.e. we imagine a system of clever but narrow intellects who postulate end and means, in order to be able to grant our only known "end," the rôle of the "cause of an action,"—a proceeding to which we have no right: it is tantamount to solving a problem by placing its solution in an inaccessible world which we cannot observe).

Finally, why could not an "end" be merely an accompanying feature in the series of changes among the active forces which bring about the action—a pale stenographic symbol stretched in consciousness beforehand, and which serves as a guide to what happens, even as a symbol of what happens, not as its cause? —But in this way we criticise will itself: is it not an illusion to regard that which enters consciousness as will-power, as a cause? Are not all conscious phenomena only final phenomena—the lost links in a chain, but apparently conditioning one another in their sequence within the plane of consciousness? This might be an illusion.

667.

Science does not inquire what impels us to will: on the contrary, it denies that willing takes place at all, and supposes that something quite different has happened—in short, that the belief in "will" and "end" is an illusion. It does not inquire into the motives of an action, as if these had been present in consciousness previous to the action, but it first divides the action up into a group of phenomena, and then seeks the previous history of this mechanical movement—but not in the terms of feeling, perception, and thought; from this quarter it can never accept the explanation: perception is precisely the matter of science, which has to be explained.—The problem of science is precisely to explain the world, without taking perceptions as the cause: for that would mean regarding perceptions themselves as the cause of perceptions. The task of science is by no means accomplished.

Thus: either there is no such thing as will,—the hypothesis of science,—or the will is free. The latter assumption represents the prevailing feeling, of which we cannot rid ourselves, even if the hypothesis of science were proved.

The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the principle that free will is the cause of every effect: thereby alone do we arrive at the feeling of causation. And thereto belongs also the feeling that every cause is not an effect, but always only a cause—if will is the cause. "Our acts of will are not necessary"—this lies in the very concept of "will." The effect necessarily comes after the cause—that is what we feel. It is merely a hypothesis that even our willing is compulsory in every case.

668.

"To will" is not "to desire," to strive, to aspire to; it distinguishes itself from that through the passion of commanding.

There is no such thing as "willing," but only the willing of something: the aim must not be severed from the state—as the epistemologists sever it. "Willing," as they understand it, is no more possible than "thinking": it is a pure invention.

It is essential to willing that something should be commanded (but that does not mean that the will is carried into effect).

The general state of tension, by virtue of which a force seeks to discharge itself, is not "willing."

669.

"Pain" and "pleasure" are the most absurd means of expressing judgments, which of course does not mean that the judgments which are enunciated in this way must necessarily be absurd. The elimination of all substantiation and logic, a yes or no in the reduction to a passionate desire to have or to reject, an imperative abbreviation, the utility of which is irrefutable: that is pain and pleasure. Its origin is in the central sphere of the intellect; its prerequisite is an infinitely accelerated process of perceiving, ordering, co-ordinating, calculating, concluding: pleasure and pain are always final phenomena, they are never causes.

As to deciding what provokes pain and pleasure, that is a question which depends upon the degree of power: the same thing, when confronted with a small quantity of power, may seem a danger and may suggest the need of speedy defence, and when confronted with the consciousness of greater power, may be a voluptuous stimulus and may be followed by a feeling of pleasure.

All feelings of pleasure and pain presuppose a measuring of collective utility and collective harmfulness: consequently a sphere where there is the willing of an object (of a condition) and the selection of the means thereto.Pleasure and pain are never "original facts."

The feelings of pleasure and pain are reactions of the will (emotions) in which the intellectual centre fixes the value of certain supervening changes as a collective value, and also as an introduction of contrary actions.

670.

The belief in "emotions"—Emotions are a fabrication of the intellect, an invention of causes which do not exist. All general bodily sensations which we do not understand are interpreted intellectually—that is to say, a reason is sought why we feel thus or thus among certain people or in certain experiences. Thus something disadvantageous dangerous, and strange is taken for granted, as if it were the cause of our being indisposed; as a matter of fact, it gets added to the indisposition, so as to make our condition thinkable. —Mighty rushes of blood to the brain, accompanied by a feeling of suffocation, are interpreted as anger: the people and things which provoke our anger are a means of relieving our physiological condition. Subsequently, after long habituation, certain processes and general feelings are so regularly correlated that the sight of certain processes provokes that condition of general feeling, and induces vascular engorgements, the ejection of seminal fluid, etc.: we then say that the "emotion is provoked by propinquity."

Judgments already inhere in pleasure and pain: stimuli become differentiated, according as to whether they increase or reduce the feeling of power.

The belief in willing. To believe that a thought may be the cause of a mechanical movement is to believe in miracles. The consistency of science demands that once we have made the world thinkable for ourselves by means of pictures, we should also make the emotions, the desires, the will, etc., thinkable—that is to say, we should deny them and treat them as errors of the intellect.

671.

Free will or no free will? —There is no such thing as "Will": that is only a simplified conception on the part of the understanding, like "matter."

All actions must first be prepared and made possible mechanically before they can be willed. Or, in most cases the "object" of an action enters the brain only after everything is prepared for its accomplishment. The object is an inner "stimulus"—nothing more.

672.

The most proximate prelude to an action relates to that action: but further back still there lies a preparatory history which covers a far wider field: the individual action is only a factor in a much more extensive and subsequent fact. The shorter and the longer processes are not reported.

673.

The theory of chance: the soul is a selecting and self-nourishing being, which is persistently extremely clever and creative (this creative power is commonly overlocked! it is taken to be merely passive).

I recognised the active and creative power within the accidental. —Accident is in itself nothing more than the clashing of creative impulses.

674.

Among the enormous multiplicity of phenomena to be observed in an organic being, that part which becomes conscious is a mere means: and the particle of "virtue," "self abnegation," and other fanciful inventions, are denied in a most thoroughgoing manner by the whole of the remaining phenomena. We would do well to study our organism in all its immorality....

The animal functions are, as a matter of fact, a million times more important than all beautiful states of the soul and heights of consciousness: the latter are an overflow, in so far as they are not needed as instruments in the service of the animal functions. The whole of conscious life: the spirit together with the soul, the heart, goodness, and virtue; in whose service does it work? In the greatest possible perfection of the means (for acquiring nourishment and advancement) serving the fundamental animal functions: above all, the ascent of the line of Life.

That which is called "flesh" and "body" is of such incalculably greater importance, that the rest is nothing more than a small appurtenance. To continue the chain of life so that it becomes ever more powerful—that is the task.

But now observe how the heart, the soul, virtue, and spirit together conspire formally to thwart this purpose: as if they were the object of every endeavour! ... The degeneration of life is essentially determined by the extraordinary fallibility of consciousness, which is held at bay least of all by the instincts, and thus commits the gravest and profoundest errors.

Now could any more insane extravagance of vanity be imagined than to measure the value of existence according to the pleasant or unpleasant feelings of this consciousness?It is obviously only a means: and pleasant or unpleasant feelings are also no more than means.

According to what standard is the objective value measured? According to the quantity of increased and more organised power alone.

675.

The value of all valuing.—My desire would be to see the agent once more identified with the action, after action has been deprived of all meaning by having been separated in thought from the agent; I should like to see the notion of doing something, the idea of a "purpose," of an "intention," of an object, reintroduced into the action, after action has been made insignificant by having been artificially separated from these things.

All "objects," "purposes," "meanings," are only manners of expression and metamorphoses of the one will inherent in all phenomena; of the will to power. To have an object, a purpose, or an intention, in fact to will generally, is equivalent to the desire for greater strength, for fuller growth, and for the means thereto in addition.

The most general and fundamental instinct in all action and willing is precisely on that account the one which is least known and is most concealed; for in practice we always follow its bidding, for the simple reason that we are in ourselves its bidding....

All valuations are only the results of, and the narrow points of view in servings this one will: valuing in itself is nothing save this, —will to power.

To criticise existence from the standpoint of any one of these values is utter nonsense and error.Even supposing that a process of annihilation follows from such a value, even so this process is in the service of this will.

The valuation of existence itself! But existence is this valuing itself! —and even when we say "no," we still do what we are.

We ought now to perceive the absurdity of this pretence at judging existence; and we ought to try and discover what actually takes place there. It is symptomatic.

676.

Concerning the Origin of our Valuations.

We are able to analyse our body, and by doing so we get the same idea of it as of the stellar system, and the differences between organic and inorganic lapses. Formerly the movements of the stars were explained as the effects of beings consciously pursuing a purpose: this is no longer required, and even in regard to the movements of the body and its changes, the belief has long since been abandoned that they can be explained by an appeal to a consciousness which has a determined purpose. By far the greater number of movements have nothing to do with consciousness at all: neither have they anything to do with sensation. Sensations and thoughts are extremely rare and insignificant things compared with the innumerable phenomena occurring every second.

On the other hand, we believe that a certain conformity of means to ends rules over the very smallest phenomenon, which it is quite beyond our deepest science to understand; a sort of cautiousness, selectiveness, co-ordination, and repairing process, etc. In short, we are in the presence of an activity to which it would be necessary to ascribe an incalculably higher and more extensive intellect than the one we are acquainted with. We learn to think less of all that is conscious: we unlearn the habit of making ourselves responsible for ourselves, because, as conscious beings fixing purposes, we are but the smallest part of ourselves.

Of the numerous influences taking effect every second, for instance, air, electricity, we feel scarcely anything at all.There might be a number of forces, which, though they never make themselves felt by us, yet influence us continually.Pleasure and pain are very rare and scanty phenomena, compared with the countless stimuli with which a cell or an organ operates upon another cell or organ.

It is the phase of the modesty of consciousness. Finally, we can grasp the conscious ego itself, merely as an instrument in the service of that higher and more extensive intellect: and then we may ask whether all conscious willing, all conscious purposes, all valuations, are not perhaps only means by virtue of which something essentially different is attained, from that which consciousness supposes. We mean: it is a question of our pleasure and pain but pleasure and pain might be the means whereby we had something to do which lies outside our consciousness.

This is to show how very superficial all conscious phenomena really are; how an action and the image of it differ; how little we know about what precedes an action; how fantastic our feelings, "freewill," and "cause and effect" are; how thoughts and images, just like words, are only signs of thoughts; the impossibility of finding the grounds of any action; the superficiality of all praise and blame; how essentially our conscious life is composed of fancies and illusion; how all our words merely stand for fancies (our emotions too), and how the union of mankind depends upon the transmission and continuation of these fancies: whereas, at bottom, the real union of mankind by means of procreation pursues its unknown way. Does this belief in the common fancies of men really alter mankind? Or is the whole body of ideas and valuations only an expression in itself of unknown changes? Are there really such things as will, purposes, thoughts, values? Is the whole of conscious life perhaps no more than mirage? Even when values seem to determine the actions of a man, they are, as a matter of fact, doing something quite different! In short, granting that a certain conformity of means to end might be demonstrated in the action of nature, without the assumption of a ruling ego: could not our notion of purposes, and our will, etc., be only a symbolic language standing for something quite different—that is to say, something not-willing and unconscious? only the thinnest semblance of that natural conformity of means to end in the organic world, but not in any way different therefrom?

Briefly, perhaps the whole of mental development is a matter of the body: it is the consciously recorded history of the fact that a higher body is forming. The organic ascends to higher regions. Our longing to know Nature is a means by virtue of which the body would reach perfection. Or, better still, hundreds of thousands of experiments are made to alter the nourishment and the mode of living of the body: the body's consciousness and valuations, its kinds of pleasure and pain, are signs of these changes and experiments.In the end, it is not a question concerning man; for he must be surpassed.

677.

To what Extent are all Interpretations of the World Symptoms of a Ruling Instinct.

The artistic contemplation of the world: to sit before the world and to survey it. But here the analysis of æsthetical contemplation, its reduction to cruelty, its feeling of security, its judicial and detached attitude, etc., are lacking. The artist himself must be taken, together with his psychology (the criticism of the instinct of play, as a discharge of energy, the love of change, the love of bringing one's soul in touch with strange things, the absolute egoism of the artist, etc.). What instincts does he sublimate?

The scientific contemplation of the world: a criticism of the psychological longing for science, the desire to make everything comprehensible; the desire to make everything practical, useful, capable of being exploited—to what extent this is anti-æsthetic. Only that value counts, which may be reckoned in figures. How it happens that a mediocre type of man preponderates under the influence of science. It would be terrible if even history were to be taken possession of in this way—the realm of the superior, of the judicial. What instincts are here sublimated!

The religious contemplation of the world: a criticism of the religious man. It is not necessary to take the moral man as the type, but the man who has extreme feelings of exaltation and of deep depression, and who interprets the former with thankfulness or suspicion without, however, seeking their origin in himself (nor the latter either). The man who essentially feels anything but free, who sublimates his conditions and states of submission.

The moral contemplation of the world. The feelings peculiar to certain social ranks are projected into the universe: stability, law, the making of things orderly, and the making of things alike, are sought in the highest spheres, because they are valued most highly,—above everything or behind everything.

What is common to all: the ruling instincts wish to be regarded as the highest values in general, even as the creative and ruling powers. It is understood that these instincts either oppose or overcome each other (join up synthetically, or alternate in power). Their profound antagonism is, however, so great, that in those cases in which they all insist upon being gratified, a man of very thorough mediocrity is the outcome.

678.

It is a question whether the origin of our apparent "knowledge" is not also a mere offshoot of our older valuations, which are so completely assimilated that they belong to the very basis of our nature. In this way only the more recent needs engage in battle with results of the oldest needs.

The world is seen, felt, and interpreted thus and thus, in order that organic life may be preserved with this particular manner of interpretation. Man is not only an individual, but the continuation of collective organic life in one definite line. The fact that man survives, proves that a certain species of interpretations (even though it still be added to) has also survived; that, as a system, this method of interpreting has not changed. "Adaptation."

Our "dissatisfaction," our "ideal," etc., may possibly be the result of this incorporated piece of interpretation, of our particular point of view: the organic world may ultimately perish owing to it just as the division of labour in organisms may be the means of bringing about the ruin of the whole, if one part happen to wither or weaken. The destruction of organic life, and even of the highest form thereof, must follow the same principles as the destruction of the individual.

679.

Judged from the standpoint of the theory of descent, individuation shows the continuous breaking up of one into two, and the equally continuous annihilation of individuals for the sake of a few individuals, which evolution bears onwards; the greater mass always perishes ("the body").

The fundamental phenomena: innumerable individuals are sacrificed for the sake of a few, in order to make the few possible. —One must not allow one's self to be deceived; the case is the same with peoples and races: they produce the "body" for the generation of isolated and valuable individuals, who continue the great process.

680.

I am opposed to the theory that the individual studies the interests of the species, or of posterity, at the cost of his own advantage: all this is only apparent.

The excessive importance which he attaches to the sexual instinct is not the result of the latter's importance to the species, for procreation is the actual performance of the individual, it is his greatest interest, and therefore it is his highest expression of power (not judged from the standpoint of consciousness, but from the very centre of the individual).

681.

The fundamental errors of the biologists who have lived hitherto: it is not a matter of the species, but of rearing stronger individuals (the many are only a means).

Life is not the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations, but will to power, which, proceeding from inside, subjugates and incorporates an ever-increasing quantity of "external" phenomena.

These biologists continue the moral valuations ("the absolutely higher worth of Altruism," the antagonism towards the lust of dominion, towards war, towards all that which is not useful, and towards all order of rank and of class).

682.

In natural science, the moral depreciation of the ego still goes hand in hand with the overestimation of the species. But the species is quite as illusory as the ego: a false distinction has been made. The ego is a hundred times more than a mere unit in a chain of creatures; it is the chain itself, in every possible respect, and the species is merely an abstraction suggested by the multiplicity and partial similarity of these chains. That the individual is sacrificed to the species, as people often say he is, is not a fact at all: it is rather only an example of false interpretation.

683.

The formula of the "progress"-superstition according to a famous physiologist of the cerebral regions:—

"L'animal ne fait jamais de progrès comme espèce.L'homme seul fait de progrès comme espèce."

No.

684.

Anti-Darwin.—The domestication of man: what definite value can it have, or has domestication in itself a definite value? —There are reasons for denying the latter proposition.

Darwin's school of thought certainly goes to great pains to convince us of the reverse: it would fain prove that the influence of domestication may be profound and fundamental.For the time being, we stand firmly as we did before; up to the present no results save very superficial modification or degeneration have been shown to follow upon domestication.And everything that escapes from the hand and discipline of man, returns almost immediately to its original natural condition.The type remains constant, man cannot "dénaturer la nature."

Biologists reckon upon the struggle for existence, the death of the weaker creature and the survival of the most robust, most gifted combatant; on that account they imagine a continuous increase in the perfection of all creatures. We, on the contrary, have convinced ourselves of the fact, that in the struggle for existence, accident serves the cause of the weak quite as much as that of the strong; that craftiness often supplements strength with advantage; that the prolificness of a species is related in a remarkable manner to that species chances of destruction....

Natural Selection is also credited with the power of slowly effecting unlimited metamorphoses: it is believed that every advantage is transmitted by heredity, and strengthened in the course of generations (when heredity is known to be so capricious that ...) ; the happy adaptations of certain creatures to very special conditions of life, are regarded as the result of surrounding influences. Nowhere, however, are examples of unconscious selection to be found (absolutely nowhere). The most different individuals associate one with the other; the extremes become lost in the mass. Each vies with the other to maintain his kind; those creatures whose appearance shields them from certain dangers, do not alter this appearance when they are in an environment quite devoid of danger.... If they live in places where their coats or their hides do not conceal them, they do not adapt themselves to their surroundings in any way.

The selection of the most beautiful has been so exaggerated, that it greatly exceeds the instincts for beauty in our own race! As a matter of fact, the most beautiful creature often couples with the most debased, and the largest with the smallest. We almost always see males and females taking advantage of their first chance meeting, and manifesting no taste or selectiveness at all. —Modification through climate and nourishment—but as a matter of fact unimportant.

There are no intermediate forms.—

The growing evolution of creatures is assumed. All grounds for this assumption are entirely lacking. Every type has its limitations: beyond these evolution cannot carry it.

My general point of view.First proposition: Man as a species is not progressing. Higher specimens are indeed attained; but they do not survive. The general level of the species is not raised.

Second proposition: Man as a species does not represent any sort of progress compared with any other animal. The whole of the animal and plant world does not develop from the lower to the higher.... but all simultaneously, haphazardly, confusedly, and at variance. The richest and most complex forms—and the term "higher type" means no more than this—perish more easily: only the lowest succeed in maintaining their apparent imperishableness. The former are seldom attained, and maintain their superior position with difficulty, the latter are compensated by great fruitfulness. —In the human race, also, the superior specimens, the happy cases of evolution, are the first to perish amid the fluctuations of chances for and against them. They are exposed to every form of decadence: they are extreme, and, on that account alone, already decadents.... The short duration of beauty, of genius, of the Cæsar, is sui generis: such things are not hereditary. The type is inherited, there is nothing extreme or particularly "happy" about a type——It is not a case of a particular fate, or of the "evil will" of Nature, but merely of the concept "superior type": the higher type is an example of an incomparably greater degree of complexity a greater sum of co-ordinated elements: but on this account disintegration becomes a thousand times more threatening. "Genius" is the sublimest machine in existence—hence it is the most fragile.

Third propositio:: The domestication (culture) of man does not sink very deep. When it does sink far below the skin it immediately becomes degeneration (type: the Christian). The wild man (or, in moral terminology, the evil man) is a reversion to Nature—and, in a certain sense, he represents a recovery, a cure from the effects of "culture." ...

685.

Anti-Darwin.—What surprises me most on making a general survey of the great destinies of man, is that I invariably see the reverse of what to-day Darwin and his school sees or will persist in seeing: selection in favour of the stronger, the better-constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the reverse of this stares one in the face: the suppression of the lucky cases, the uselessness of the more highly constituted types, the inevitable mastery of the mediocre, and even of those who are below mediocrity. Unless we are shown some reason why man is an exception among living creatures, I incline to the belief that Darwin's school is everywhere at fault. That will to power, in which I perceive the ultimate reason and character of all change, explains why it is that selection is never in favour of the exceptions and of the lucky cases: the strongest and happiest natures are weak when they are confronted with a majority ruled by organised gregarious instincts and the fear which possesses the weak. My general view of the world of values shows that in the highest values which now sway the destiny of man, the happy cases among men, the select specimens do not prevail: but rather the decadent specimens,—perhaps there is nothing more interesting in the world than this unpleasant spectacle....

Strange as it may seem, the strong always have to be upheld against the weak; and the well-constituted against the ill-constituted, the healthy against the sick and physiologically botched.If we drew our morals from reality, they would read thus: the mediocre are more valuable than the exceptional creatures, and the decadent than the mediocre; the will to nonentity prevails over the will to life—and the general aim now is, in Christian, Buddhistic, Schopenhauerian phraseology: "It is better not to be than to be."

I protest against this formulating of reality into a moral: and I loathe Christianity with a deadly loathing, because it created sublime words and attitudes in order to deck a revolting truth with all the tawdriness of justice, virtue, and godliness....

I see all philosophers and the whole of science on their knees before a reality which is the reverse of "the struggle for life," as Darwin and his school understood it—that is to say, wherever I look, I see those prevailing and surviving, who throw doubt and suspicion upon life and the value of life. —The error of the Darwinian school became a problem to me: how can one be so blind as to make this mistake?

That species show an ascending tendency, is the most nonsensical assertion that has ever been made: until now they have only manifested a dead level. There is nothing whatever to prove that the higher organisms have developed from the lower. I see that the lower, owing to their numerical strength, their craft, and ruse, now preponderate,—and I fail to see an instance in which an accidental change produces an advantage, at least not for a very long period: for it would be necessary to find some reason why an accidental change should become so very strong.

I do indeed find the "cruelty of Nature" which is so often referred to; but in a different place: Nature is cruel, but against her lucky and well-constituted children; she protects and shelters and loves the lowly.

In short, the increase of a species' power, as the result of the preponderance of its particularly well-constituted and strong specimens, is perhaps less of a certainty than that it is the result of the preponderance of its mediocre and lower specimens ...in the case of the latter, we find great fruitfulness and permanence: in the case of the former, the besetting dangers are greater, waste is more rapid, and decimation is more speedy.

686.

Man as he has appeared up to the present is the embryo of the man of the future; all the formative powers which are to produce the latter, already lie in the former: and owing to the fact that they are enormous, the more promising for the future the modern individual happens to be, the more suffering falls to his lot. This is the profoundest concept of suffering. The formative powers clash. —The isolation of the individual need not deceive one—as a matter of fact, some uninterrupted current does actually flow through all individuals, and does thus unite them. The fact that they feel themselves isolated, is the most powerful spur in the process of setting themselves the loftiest of aims: their search for happiness is the means which keeps together and moderates the formative powers, and keeps them from being mutually destructive.

687.

Excessive intellectual strength sets itself new goals; it is not in the least satisfied by the command and the leadership of the inferior world, or by the preservation of the organism, of the "individual."

We are more than the individual: we are the whole chain itself, with the tasks of all the possible futures of that chain in us.

---

3.Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations.

688.

The unitary view of psychology.—We are accustomed to regard the development of a vast number of forms as compatible with one single origin.

My theory would be: that the will to power is the primitive motive force out of which all other motives have been derived;

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?

Not only conservation of energy, but the minimum amount of waste; so that the only reality is this: the will of every centre of power to become stronger—not self-preservation, but the desire to appropriate, to become master, to become more, to become stronger.

Is the fact that science is possible a proof of the principle of causation—"From like causes, like effects"—"A permanent law of things"—"Invariable order"?Because something is calculable, is it therefore on that account necessary?

If something happens thus, and thus only, it is not the manifestation of a "principle," of a "law," of "order." What happens is that certain quanta of power begin to operate, and their essence is to exercise their power over all other quanta of power. Can we assume the existence of a striving after power without a feeling of pleasure and pain, i.e. without the sensation of an increase or a decrease of power? Is mechanism only a language of signs for the concealed fact of a world of fighting and conquering quanta of will-power? All mechanical first-principles, matter, atoms, weight, pressure, and repulsion, are not facts in themselves, but interpretations arrived at with the help of psychical fictions.

Life, which is our best known form of being, is altogether "will to the accumulation of strength"—all the processes of life hinge on this: everything aims, not at preservation, but at accretion and accumulation.Life as an individual case (a hypothesis which may be applied to existence in general) strives after the maximum feeling of power; life is essentially a striving after more power; striving itself is only a straining after more power; the most fundamental and innermost thing of all is this will. (Mechanism is merely the semeiotics of the results.)

690.

The thing which is the cause of the existence of development cannot in the course of investigation be found above development; it should neither be regarded as "evolving" nor as evolved ...the "will to power" cannot have been evolved.

691.

What is the relation of the whole of the organic process towards the rest of nature?—Here the fundamental will reveals itself.

692.

Is the "will to power" a kind of will, or is it identical with the concept will?Is it equivalent to desiring or commanding; is it the will which Schopenhauer says is the essence of things?

My proposition is that the will of psychologists hitherto has been an unjustifiable generalisation, and that there is no such thing as this sort of will, that instead of the development of one will into several forms being taken as a fact, the character of will has been cancelled owing to the fact that its content, its "whither," was subtracted from it: in Schopenhauer this is so in the highest degree; what he calls "will" is merely an empty word.There is even less plausibility in the will to live: for life is simply one of the manifestations of the will to power; it is quite arbitrary and ridiculous to suggest that everything is striving to enter into this particular form of the will to power.

693.

If the innermost essence of existence is the will to power; if happiness is every increase of power, and unhappiness the feeling of not being able to resist, of not being able to become master: may we not then postulate happiness and pain as cardinal facts?Is will possible without these two oscillations of yea and nay?But who feels happiness? ...Who will have power? ...Nonsensical question!If the essence of all things is itself will to power, and consequently the ability to feel pleasure and pain!Albeit: contrasts and obstacles are necessary, therefore also, relatively, units which trespass on one another.

694.

According to the obstacles which a force seeks with a view of overcoming them, the measure of the failure and the fatality thus provoked must increase, and in so far as every force can only manifest itself against some thing that opposes it, an element of unhappiness is necessarily inherent in every action.But this pain acts as a greater incitement to life, and increases the will to power.

695.

If pleasure and pain are related to the feeling of power, life would have to represent such an increase in power that the difference, the "plus," would have to enter consciousness. A dead level of power, if maintained, would have to measure its happiness in relation to depreciations of that level, i.e. in relation to states of unhappiness and not of happiness.... The will to an increase lies in the essence of happiness: that power is enhanced, and that this difference becomes conscious.

In a state of decadence after a certain time the opposite difference becomes conscious, that is decrease: the memory of former strong moments depresses the present feelings of happiness in this state comparison reduces happiness.

696.

It is not the satisfaction of the will which is the cause of happiness (to this superficial theory I am more particularly opposed—this absurd psychological forgery in regard to the most simple things), but it is that the will is always striving to overcome that which stands in its way.The feeling of happiness lies precisely in the discontentedness of the will, in the fact that without opponents and obstacles it is never satisfied."The happy man": a gregarious ideal.

697.

The normal discontent of our instincts—for instance, of the instinct of hunger, of sex, of movement—contains nothing which is in itself depressing; it rather provokes the feeling of life, and, whatever the pessimists may say to us, like all the rhythms of small and irritating stimuli, it strengthens. Instead of this discontent making us sick of life, it is rather the great stimulus to life.

(Pleasure might even perhaps be characterised as the rhythm of small and painful stimuli.)

698.

Kant says: "These lines of Count Verri's (Sull' indole del piacere e del dolore; 1781) I confirm with absolute certainty: 'Il solo principio motore dell' uomo è il dolore. Il dolore precede ogni piacere. Il piacere non è un essere positivo.' "[5]

699.

Pain is something different from pleasure—I mean it is not the latter's opposite.

If the essence of pleasure has been aptly characterised as the feeling of increased power (that is to say, as a feeling of difference which presupposes comparison), that does not define the nature of pain.The false contrasts which the people, and consequently the language, believes in, are always dangerous fetters which impede the march of truth.There are even cases where a kind of pleasure is conditioned by a certain rhythmic sequence of small, painful stimuli: in this way a very rapid growth of the feeling of power and of the feeling of pleasure is attained. This is the case, for instance, in tickling, also in the sexual tickling which accompanies the coitus: here we see pain acting as the ingredient of happiness. It seems to be a small hindrance which is overcome, followed immediately by another small hindrance which once again is overcome—this play of resistance and resistance overcome is the greatest excitant of that complete feeling of overflowing and surplus power which constitutes the essence of happiness.

The converse, which would be an increase in the feeling of pain through small intercalated pleasurable stimuli, does not exist: pleasure and pain are not opposites.

Pain is undoubtedly an intellectual process in which a judgment is inherent—the judgment harmful, in which long experience is epitomised.There is no such thing as pain in itself.It is not the wound that hurts, it is the experience of the harmful results a wound may have for the whole organism, which here speaks in this deeply moving way, and is called pain.(In the case of deleterious influences which were unknown to ancient man, as, for instance, those residing in the new combination of poisonous chemicals, the hint from pain is lacking, and we are lost.)

That which is quite peculiar in pain is the prolonged disturbance, the quivering subsequent to a terrible shock in the ganglia of the nervous system.As a matter of fact, nobody suffers from the cause of pain (from any sort of injury, for instance), but from the protracted disturbance of his equilibrium which follows upon the shock.Pain is a disease of the cerebral centres—pleasure is no disease at all.

The fact that pain may be the cause of reflex actions has appearances and even philosophical prejudice in its favour.But in very sudden accidents, if we observe closely, we find that the reflex action occurs appreciably earlier than the feeling of pain.I should be in a bad way when I stumbled if I had to wait until the fact had struck the bell of my consciousness, and until a hint of what I had to do had been telegraphed back to me.On the contrary, what I notice as clearly as possible is, that first, in order to avoid a fall, reflex action on the part of my foot takes place, and then, after a certain measurable space of time, there follows quite suddenly a kind of painful wave in my forehead.Nobody, then, reacts to pain.Pain is subsequently projected into the wounded quarter—but the essence of this local pain is nevertheless not the expression of a kind of local wound, it is merely a local sign, the strength and nature of which is in keeping with the severity of the wound, and of which the nerve centres have taken note.The fact that as the result of this shock the muscular power of the organism is materially reduced, does not prove in any way that the essence of pain is to be sought in the lowering of the feeling of power.

Once more let me repeat: nobody reacts to pain: pain is no "cause" of action.Pain itself is a reaction; the reflex movement is another and earlier process—both originate at different points....

700.

The message of pain: in itself pain does not announce that which has been momentarily damaged, but the significance of this damage for the individual as a whole.

Are we to suppose that there are any pains which "the species" feel, and which the individual does not?

701.

"The sum of unhappiness outweighs the sum of happiness: consequently it were better that the world did not exist"—"The world is something which from a rational standpoint it were better did not exist, because it occasions more pain than pleasure to the feeling subject"—this futile gossip now calls itself pessimism!

Pleasure and pain are accompanying factors, not causes; they are second-rate valuations derived from a dominating value,—they are one with the feeling "useful," "harmful," and therefore they are absolutely fugitive and relative.For in regard to all utility and harmfulness there are a hundred different ways of asking "what for?"

I despise this pessimism of sensitiveness: it is in itself a sign of profoundly impoverished life.

702.

Man does not seek happiness and does not avoid unhappiness.Everybody knows the famous prejudices I here contradict.Pleasure and pain are mere results, mere accompanying phenomena—that which every man, which every tiny particle of a living organism will have, is an increase of power. In striving after this, pleasure and pain are encountered; it is owing to that will that the organism seeks opposition and requires that which stands in its way.... Pain as the hindrance of its will to power is therefore a normal feature, a natural ingredient of every organic phenomenon; man does not avoid it, on the contrary, he is constantly in need of it: every triumph, every feeling of pleasure, every event presupposes an obstacle overcome.

Let us take the simplest case, that of primitive nourishment; the protoplasm extends its pseudopodia in order to seek for that which resists it,—it does not do so out of hunger, but owing to its will to power.Then it makes the attempt to overcome, to appropriate, and to incorporate that with which it comes into contact—what people call "nourishment" is merely a derivative, a utilitarian application, of the primordial will to become stronger.

Pain is so far from acting as a diminution of our feeling of power, that it actually forms in the majority of cases a spur to this feeling,—the obstacle is the stimulus of the will to power.

703.

Pain has been confounded with one of its subdivisions, which is exhaustion: the latter does indeed represent a profound reduction and lowering of the will to power, a material loss of strength—that is to say, there is (a) pain as the stimulus to an increase or power, and (b) pain following upon an expenditure of power; in the first case it is a spur, in the second it is the outcome of excessive spurring.... The inability to resist is proper to the latter form of pain: the provocation of that which resists is proper to the former.... The only happiness which is to be felt in the state of exhaustion is that of going to sleep; in the other case, happiness means triumph.... The great confusion of psychologists consisted in the fact that they did not keep these two kinds of happiness—that of falling asleep, and that of triumph—sufficiently apart. Exhausted people will have repose, slackened limbs, peace and quiet—and these things constitute the bliss of Nihilistic religions and philosophies, the wealthy in vital strength, the active, want triumph, defeated opponents, and the extension of their feeling of power over ever wider regions. Every healthy function of the organism has this need,—and the whole organism constitutes an intricate complexity of systems struggling for the increase of the feeling of power....

704.

How is it that the fundamental article of faith in all psychologies is a piece of most outrageous contortion and fabrication?"Man strives after happiness," for instance—how much of this is true?In order to understand what life is, and what kind of striving and tenseness life contains, the formula should hold good not only of trees and plants, but of animals also."What does the plant strive after?"—But here we have already invented a false entity which does not exist,—concealing and denying the fact of an infinitely variegated growth, with individual and semi-individual starting-points, if we give it the clumsy title "plant" as if it were a unit. It is very obvious that the ultimate and smallest "individuals" cannot be understood in the sense of metaphysical individuals or atoms; their sphere of power is continually shifting its ground: but with all these changes, can it be said that any of them strives after happiness? —All this expanding, this incorporation and growth, is a search for resistance; movement is essentially related to states of pain: the driving power here must represent some other desire if it leads to such continual willing and seeking of pain. —To what end do the trees of a virgin forest contend with each other? "For happiness"? —For power! ...

Man is now master of the forces of nature, and master too of his own wild and unbridled feelings (the passions have followed suit, and have learned to become useful)—in comparison with primeval man, the man of to-day represents an enormous quantum of power, but not an increase in happiness!How can one maintain, then, that he has striven after happiness?..

705.

But while I say this I see above me, and below the stars, the glittering rat's-tail of errors which hitherto has represented the greatest inspiration of man: "All happiness is the result of virtue all virtue is the result of free will"!

Let us transvalue the values: all capacity is the outcome of a happy organisation, all freedom is the outcome of capacity (freedom understood here as facility in self-direction.Every artist will understand me).

706.

"The value of life."—Every life stands by itself; all existence must be justified, and not only life,—the justifying principle must be one through which life itself speaks.

Life is only a means to something: it is the expression of the forms of growth in power.

707.

The "conscious world" cannot be a starting-point for valuing: an "objective" valuation is necessary.

In comparison with the enormous and complicated antagonistic processes which the collective life of every organism represents, its conscious world of feelings, intentions, and valuations, is only a small slice.We have absolutely no right to postulate this particle of consciousness as the object, the wherefore, of the collective phenomena of life: the attainment of consciousness is obviously only an additional means to the unfolding of life and to the extension of its power.That is why it is a piece of childish simplicity to set up happiness, or intellectuality, or morality, or any other individual sphere of consciousness, as the highest value: and maybe to justify "the world" with it.

This is my fundamental objection to all philosophical and moral cosmologies and theologies, to all wherefores and highest values that have appeared in philosophies and philosophic religions hitherto.A kind of means is misunderstood as the object itself: conversely life and its growth of power were debased to a means.

If we wished to postulate an adequate object of life it would not necessarily be related in any way with the category of conscious life; it would require rather to explain conscious life as a mere means to itself....

The "denial of life" regarded as the object of life, the object of evolution! Existence—a piece of tremendous stupidity! Any such mad interpretation is only the outcome of life's being measured by the factors of consciousness (pleasure and pain, good and evil). Here the means are made to stand against the end—the "unholy," absurd, and, above all, disagreeable means: how can the end be any use when it requires such means? But where the fault lies is here—instead of looking for the end which would explain the necessity of such means, we posited an end from the start which actually excludes such means, i.e. we made a desideratum in regard to certain means (especially pleasurable, rational, and virtuous) into a rule, and then only did we decide what end would be desirable....

Where the fundamental fault lies is in the fact that, instead of regarding consciousness as an instrument and an isolated phenomenon of life in general, we made it a standard, the highest value in life: it is the faulty standpoint of a parte ad totum,—and that is why all philosophers are instinctively seeking at the present day for a collective consciousness, a thing that lives and wills consciously with all that happens, a "Spirit," a "God."But they must be told that it is precisely thus that life is converted into a monster; that a "God" and a general sensorium would necessarily be something on whose account the whole of existence would have to be condemned....Our greatest relief came when we eliminated the general consciousness which postulates ends and means—in this way we ceased from being necessarily pessimists....Our greatest indictment of life was the existence of God.

708.

Concerning the value of "Becoming."—If the movement of the world really tended to reach a final state, that state would already have been reached.The only fundamental fact, however, is that it does not tend to reach a final state: and every philosophy and scientific hypothesis (e.g. materialism) according to which such a final state is necessary, is refuted by this fundamental fact.

I should like to have a concept of the world which does justice to this fact.Becoming ought to be explained without having recourse to such final designs.Booming must appear justified at every instant (or it must defy all valuation: which has unity as its end); the present must not under any circumstances be justified by a future, nor must the past be justified for the sake of the present. "Necessity" must not be interpreted in the form of a prevailing and ruling collective force or as a prime motor; and still less as the necessary cause of some valuable result. But to this end it is necessary to deny a collective consciousness for Becoming,—a "God," in order that life may not be veiled under the shadow of a being who feels and knows as we do and yet wills nothing: "God" is useless if he wants nothing; and if he do want something, this presupposes a general sum of suffering and irrationality which lowers the general value of Becoming. Fortunately any such general power is lacking (a suffering God overlooking everything, a general sensorium and ubiquitous Spirit, would be the greatest indictment of existence).

Strictly speaking nothing of the nature of Being must be allowed to remain,—because in that case Becoming loses its value and gets to be sheer and superfluous nonsense.

The next question, then, is: how did the illusion Being originate (why was it obliged to originate);

Likewise: how was it that all valuations based upon the hypothesis that there was such a thing as Being came to be depreciated.

But in this way we have recognised that this hypothesis concerning Being is the source of all the calumny that has been directed against the world (the "Better world," the "True world" the "World Beyond," the "Thing-in-itself").

(1) Becoming has no final state, it does not tend towards stability.

(2) Becoming is not a state of appearance, the world of Being is probably only appearance.

(3) Becoming is of precisely the same value at every instant; the sum of its value always remains equal: expressed otherwise, it has no value; for that according to which it might be measured, and in regard to which the word value might have some sense, is entirely lacking.The collective value of the world defies valuation; for this reason philosophical pessimism belongs to the order of farces.

709.

We should not make our little desiderata the judges of existence!Neither should we make culminating evolutionary forms (e.g. mind) the "absolute" which stands behind evolution!

710.

Our knowledge has become scientific to the extent in which it has been able to make use of number and measure.It might be worth while to try and see whether a scientific order of values might not be constructed according to a scale of numbers and measures representing energy....All other values are matters of prejudice, simplicity, and misunderstanding.They may all be reduced to that scale of numbers and measures representing energy.The ascent in this scale would represent an increase of value, the descent a diminution.

But here appearance and prejudice are against one (moral values are only apparent values compared with those which are physiological).

711.

Why the standpoint of "value" lapses:—

Because in the "whole process of the universe" the work of mankind does not come under consideration; because a general process (viewed in the light of a system) does not exist.

Because there is no such thing as a whole; because no depreciation of human existence or human aims can be made in regard to something that does not exist.

Because "necessity," "causality," "design," are merely useful "semblances."

Because the aim is not "the increase of the sphere of consciousness," but the increase of power; in which increase the utility of consciousness is also contained; and the same holds good of pleasure and pain.

Because a mere means must not be elevated to the highest criterion of value (such as states of consciousness like pleasure and pain, if consciousness is in itself only a means).

Because the world is not an organism at all, but a thing of chaos; because the development of "intellectuality" is only a means tending relatively to extend the duration of an organisation.

Because all "desirability" has no sense in regard to the general character of existence.

712.

"God" is the culminating moment: life is an eternal process of deifying and undeifying. But withal there is no zenith of values, but only a zenith of power.

Absolute exclusion of mechanical and materialistic interpretations. they are both only expressions of inferior states, of emotions deprived of all spirit (of the "will to power").

The retrograde movement front the zenith of development (the intellectualisation of power on some slave-infected soil) may be shown to be the result of the highest degree of energy turning against itself, once it no longer has anything to organise, and utilising its power in order to disorganise.

(a) The ever-increasing suppression of societies, and the latter's subjection by a smaller number of stronger individuals.

(b) The ever-increasing suppression of the privileged and the strong, hence the rise of democracy, and ultimately of anarchy, in the elements.

713.

Value is the highest amount of power that a man can assimilate—a man, not mankind! Mankind is much more of a means than an end. It is a question of type: mankind is merely the experimental material; it is the overflow of the ill-constituted—a field of ruins.

714.

Words relating to values are merely banners planted on those spots where a new blessedness was discovered—a new feeling.

715.

The standpoint of "value" is the same as that of the conditions of preservation and enhancement, in regard to complex creatures of relative stability appearing in the course of evolution.

There are no such things as lasting and ultimate entities, no atoms, no monads: here also "permanence" was first introduced by ourselves (from practical, utilitarian, and other motives).

"The forms that rule"; the sphere of the subjugated is continually extended; or it decreases or increases according to the conditions (nourishment) being either favourable or unfavourable.

"Value" is essentially the standpoint for the increase or decrease of these dominating centres (pluralities in any case; for "unity" cannot be observed anywhere in the nature of development).

The means of expression afforded by language are useless for the purpose of conveying any facts concerning "development": the need of positing a rougher world of stable existences and things forms part of our eternal desire for preservation. We may speak of atoms and monads in a relative sense: and this is certain, that the smallest world is the most stable world ...There is no such thing as will: there are only punctuations of will, which are constantly increasing and decreasing their power.

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III

THE WILL TO POWER AS EXEMPLIFIED IN SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL.

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1.Society and the State.

716.

We take it as a principle that only individuals feel any responsibility.Corporations are invented to do what the individual has not the courage to do.For this reason all communities are vastly more upright and instructive, as regards the nature of man, than the individual who is too cowardly to have the courage of his own desires.

All altruism is the prudence of the private man.societies are not mutually altruistic.The commandment, "Thou shalt love thy next-door neighbour," has never been extended to thy neighbour in general.Rather what Manu says is probably truer: "We must conceive of all the States on our own frontier, and their allies, as being hostile, and for the same reason we must consider all of their neighbours as being friendly to us."

The study of society is invaluable, because man in society is far more childlike than man individually. Society has never regarded virtue as anything else than as a means to strength, power, and order. Manu's words again are simple and dignified: "Virtue could hardly rely on her own strength alone. Really it is only the fear of punishment that keeps men in their limits, and leaves every one in peaceful possession of his own."

717.

The State, or unmorality organised, is from within—the police, the penal code, status, commerce, and the family; and from without, the will to war, to power, to conquest and revenge.

A multitude will do things an individual will not, because of the division of responsibility, of command and execution; because the virtues of obedience, duty, patriotism, and local sentiment are all introduced; because feelings of pride, severity, strength, hate, and revenge in short, all typical traits are upheld, and these are characteristics utterly alien to the herd-man.

718.

You haven't, any of you, the courage either to kill or to flog a man.But the huge machinery of the State quells the individual and makes him decline to be answerable for his own deed (obedience, loyalty, etc.).

Everything that a man does in the service of the State is against his own nature.Similarly, everything he learns in view of future service of the State. This result is obtained through division of labour (so that responsibility is subdivided too):—

The legislator—and he who fulfils the law.

The teacher of discipline—and those who have grown hard and severe under discipline.

719.

A division of labour among the emotions exists inside society, making individuals and classes produce an imperfect, but more useful, kind of soul.Observe how every type in society has become atrophied with regard to certain emotions with the view of fostering and accentuating other emotions.

Morality may be thus justified:—

Economically,—as aiming at the greatest possible use of all individual power, with the view of preventing the waste of exceptional natures.

Æsthetically,—as the formation of fixed types, and the pleasure in one's own.

Politically,—as the art of bearing with the severe divergencies of the degrees of power in society.

Psychologically, as an imaginary preference for the bungled and the mediocre, in order to preserve the weak.

720.

Man has one terrible and fundamental wish; he desires power, and this impulse, which is called freedom, must be the longest restrained.Hence ethics has instinctively aimed at such an education as shall restrain the desire for power; thus our morality slanders the would-be tyrant, and glorifies charity, patriotism, and the ambition of the herd.

721.

Impotence to power, how it disguises itself and plays the hypocrite, as obedience, subordination, the pride of duty and morality, submission, devotion, love (the idolisation and apotheosis of the commander is a kind of compensation, and indirect self-enhancement).It veils itself further under fatalism and resignation, objectivity, self-tyranny, stoicism, asceticism, self-abnegation, hallowing.Other disguises are: criticism, pessimism, indignation, susceptibility, beautiful soul, virtue, self—deification, philosophic detachment, freedom from contact with the world (the realisation of impotence disguises itself as disdain).

There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one's self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication.

There are men who desire power simply for the sake of the happiness it will bring; these belong chiefly to political parties.Other men have the same yearning, even when power means visible disadvantages, the sacrifice of their happiness, and well-being; they are the ambitious.Other men, again, are only like dogs in a manger, and will have power only to prevent its falling into the hands of others on whom they would then be dependent.

722.

If there be justice and equality before the law, what would thereby be abolished?—Suspense, enmity, hatred.But it is a mistake to think that you thereby increase happiness; for the Corsicans rejoice in more happiness than the Continentals.

723.

Reciprocity and the expectation of a reward is one of the most seductive forms of the devaluation of mankind.It involves that equality which depreciates any gulf as immoral.

724.

Utility is entirely dependent upon the object to be attained,—the wherefore?And this wherefore, this purpose, is again dependent upon the degree of power.Utilitarianism is not, therefore, a fundamental doctrine; it is only a story of sequels, and cannot be made obligatory for all.

725.

Of old, the State was regarded theoretically as a utilitarian institution; it has now become so in a practical sense.The time of kings has gone by, because people are no longer worthy of them.They do not wish to see the symbol of their ideal in a king, but only a means to their own ends.That's the whole truth.

726.

I am trying to grasp the absolute sense of the communal standard of judgment and valuation, naturally without any intention of deducing morals.

The degree of psychological falsity and denseness required in order to sanctify the emotions essential to preservation and expansion of power, and to create a good conscience for them.

The degree of stupidity required in order that general rules and values may remain possible (including education, formation of culture, and training).

The degree of inquisitiveness, suspicion, and intolerance required in order to deal with exceptions, to suppress them as criminals, and thus to give them bad consciences, and to make them sick with their own singularity.

727.

Morality is essentially a shield, a means of defence; and, in so far, it is a sign of the imperfectly developed man (he is still in armour; he is still stoical).

The fully developed man is above all provided with weapons: he is a man who attacks.

The weapons of war are converted into weapons of peace (out of scales and carapaces grow feathers and hair).

728.

The very notion, "living organism", implies that there must be growth,—that there must be a striving after an extension of power, and therefore a process of absorption of other forces. Under the drowsiness brought on by moral narcotics, people speak of the right of the individual to defend himself; on the same principle one might speak of his right to attack: for both—and the latter more than the former—are necessities where all living organisms are concerned: aggressive and defensive egoism are not questions of choice or even of "free will," but they are fatalities of life itself.

In this respect it is immaterial whether one have an individual, a living body, or "an advancing society" in view.The right to punish (or society's means of defence) has been arrived at only through a misuse of the word "right": a right is acquired only by contract, but self-defence and self-preservation do not stand upon the basis of a contract.A people ought at least, with quite as much justification, to be able to regard its lust of power, either in arms, commerce, trade, or colonisation, as a right the right of growth, perhaps....When the instincts of a society ultimately make it give up war and renounce conquest, it is decadent: it is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers.In the majority of cases, it is true, assurances of peace are merely stupefying draughts.

729.

The maintenance of the military State is the last means of adhering to the great tradition of the past; or, where it has been lost, to revive it.By means of it the superior or strong type of man is preserved, and all institutions and ideas which perpetuate enmity and order of rank in States, such as national feeling, protective tariffs, etc., may on that account seem justified.

730.

In order that a thing may last longer than a person (that is to say, in order that a work may outlive the individual who has created it), all manner of limitations and prejudices must be imposed upon people. But how? By means of love, reverence, gratitude towards the person who created the work, or by means of the thought that our ancestors fought for it, or by virtue of the feeling that the safety of our descendants will be secured if we uphold the work—for instance, the polis. Morality is essentially the means of; making something survive the individual, because it makes him of necessity a slave. Obviously the aspect from above is different from the aspect from below, and will lead to quite different interpretations. How is organised power maintained?—By the fact that countless generations sacrifice themselves to its cause.

731.

Marriage, property, speech, tradition, race, family, people, and State, are each links in a chain—separate parts which have a more or less high or low origin.Economically they are justified by the surplus derived from the advantages of uninterrupted work and multiple production, as weighed against the disadvantages of greater expense in barter and the difficulty of making things last. (The working parts are multiplied, and yet remain largely idle. Hence the cost of producing them is greater, and the cost of maintaining them by no means inconsiderable.) The advantage consists in avoiding interruption and incident loss. Nothing is more expensive than a start. "The higher the standard of living, the greater will be the expense of maintenance, nourishment, and propagation, as also the risk and the probability of an utter fall on reaching the summit."

732.

In bourgeois marriages, naturally in the best sense of the word marriage, there is no question whatsoever of love any more than there is of money.For on love no institution can be founded.The whole matter consists in society giving leave to two persons to satisfy their sexual desires under conditions obviously designed to safeguard social order.Of course there must be a certain attraction between the parties and a vast amount of good nature, patience, compatibility, and charity in any such contract.But the word love should not be misused as regards such a union.For two lovers, in the real and strong meaning of the word, the satisfaction of sexual desire is unessential; it is a mere symbol.For the one side, as I have already said, it is a symbol of unqualified submission: for the other, a sign of condescension—a sign of the appropriation of property. Marriage, as understood by the real old nobility, meant the breeding forth of the race (but are there any nobles nowadays? Quaeritur),—that is to say, the maintenance of a fixed definite type of ruler, for which object husband and wife were sacrificed. Naturally the first consideration here had nothing to do with love; on the contrary! It did not even presuppose that mutual sympathy which is the sine qua non of the bourgeois marriage. The prime consideration was the interest of the race, and in the second place came the interest of a particular class. But in the face of the coldness and rigour and calculating lucidity of such a noble concept of marriage as prevailed among every healthy aristocracy, like that of ancient Athens, and even of Europe during the eighteenth century, we warm-blooded animals, with our miserably oversensitive hearts, we "moderns," cannot restrain a slight shudder. That is why love as a passion, in the big meaning of this word, was invented for, and in, an aristocratic community—where convention and abstinence are most severe.

733.

Concerning the future of marriage. A super-tax on inherited property, a longer term of military service for bachelors of a certain minimum age within the community.

Privileges of all sorts for fathers who lavish boys upon the world, and perhaps plural votes as well.

A medical certificate as a condition of any marriage, endorsed by the parochial authorities, in which a series of questions addressed to the parties and the medical officers must be answered ("family histories").

As a counter-agent to prostitution, or as its ennoblement, I would recommend leasehold marriages (to last for a term of years or months), with adequate provision for the children.

Every marriage to be warranted and sanctioned by a certain number of good men and true, of the parish, as a parochial obligation.

734.

Another commandment of philanthropy.—There are cases where to have a child would be a crime—for example, for chronic invalids and extreme neurasthenics. These people should be converted to chastity, and for this purpose the music of Parsifal might at all events be tried. For Parsifal himself, that born fool, had ample reasons for not desiring to propagate. Unfortunately, however, one of the regular symptoms of exhausted stock is the inability to exercise any self-restraint in the presence of stimuli, and the tendency to respond to the smallest sexual attraction. It would be quite a mistake, for instance, to think of Leopardi as a chaste man. In such cases the priest and moralist play a hopeless game: it would be far better to send for the apothecary. Lastly, society here has a positive duty to fulfil, and of all the demands that are made on it, there are few more urgent and necessary than this one. Society as the trustee of life, is responsible to life for every botched life that comes into existence, and as it has to atone for such lives, it ought consequently to make it impossible for them ever to see the light of day: it should in many cases actually prevent the act of procreation, and may, without any regard for rank, descent, or intellect, hold in readiness the most rigorous forms of compulsion and restriction, and, under certain circumstances, have recourse to castration. The Mosaic law, "Thou shalt do no murder," is a piece of ingenuous puerility compared with the earnestness of this forbidding of life to decadents, "Thou shalt not beget"!!! ... For life itself recognises no solidarity or equality of rights between the healthy and unhealthy parts of an organism. The latter must at all cost be eliminated, lest the whole fall to pieces. Compassion for decadents, equal rights for the physiologically botched—this would be the very pinnacle of immorality, it would be setting up Nature's most formidable opponent as morality itself!

735.

There are some delicate and morbid natures, the so-called idealists, who can never under any circumstances rise above a coarse, immature crime: yet it is the great justification of their anæmic little existence, it is the small requital for their lives of cowardice and falsehood to have been for one instant at least—strong. But they generally collapse after such an act.

736.

In our civilised world we seldom hear of any but the bloodless, trembling criminal, overwhelmed by the curse and contempt of society, doubting even himself, and always belittling and belying his deeds—a misbegotten sort of criminal; that is why we are opposed to the idea that all great men have been criminals (only in the grand style, and neither petty nor pitiful), that crime must be inherent in greatness (this at any rate is the unanimous verdict of all those students of human nature who have sounded the deepest waters of great souls). To feel one's self adrift from all questions of ancestry, conscience, and duty—this is the danger with which every great man is confronted. Yet this is precisely what he desires: he desires the great goal, and consequently the means thereto.

737.

In times when man is led by reward and punishment, the class of man which the legislator has in view is still of a low and primitive type: he is treated as one treats a child.In our latter-day culture, general degeneracy removes all sense from reward and punishment.This determination of action by the prospect of reward and punishment presupposes young, strong, and vigorous races.In effete races impulses are so irrepressible that a mere idea has no force whatever.Inability to offer any resistance to a stimulus, and the feeling that one must react to it: this excessive susceptibility of decadents makes all such systems of punishment and reform altogether senseless.

The idea "amelioration" presupposes a normal and strong creature whose action must in some way be balanced or cancelled if he is not to be lost and turned into an enemy of the community.

738.

The effect of prohibition. Every power which forbids and which knows how to excite fear in the person forbidden creates a guilty conscience. (That is to say, a person has a certain desire but is conscious of the danger of gratifying it, and is consequently forced to be secretive, underhand, and cautious.) Thus any prohibition deteriorates the character of those who do not willingly submit themselves to it, but are constrained thereto.

739.

"Punishment and reward."—These two things stand or fall together.Nowadays no one will accept a reward or acknowledge that any authority should have the power to punish.Warfare has been reformed.We have a desire: it meets with opposition: we then see that we shall most easily obtain it by coming to some agreement—by drawing up a contract.In modern society where every one has given his assent to a certain contract, the criminal is a man who breaks that contract. This at least is a clear concept. But in that case, anarchists and enemies of social order could not be tolerated.

740.

Crimes belong to the category of revolt against the social system, A rebel is not punished, he is simply suppressed. He may be an utterly contemptible and pitiful creature; but there is nothing intrinsically despicable about rebellion in fact, in our particular society revolt is far from being disgraceful. There are cases in which a rebel deserves honour precisely because he is conscious of certain elements in society which cry aloud for hostility; for such a man rouses us from our slumbers. When a criminal commits but one crime against a particular person, it does not alter the fact that all his instincts urge him to make a stand against the whole social system. His isolated act is merely a symptom.

The idea of punishment ought to be reduced to the concept of the suppression of revolt, a weapon against the vanquished (by means of long or short terms of imprisonment).But punishment should not be associated in any way with contempt.A criminal is at all events a man who has set his life, his honour, his freedom at stake; he is therefore a man of courage.Neither should punishment be regarded as penance or retribution, as though there were some recognised rate of exchange between crime and punishment.Punishment does not purify, simply because crime does not sully.

A criminal should not be prevented from making his peace with society, provided he does not belong to the race of criminals. In the latter case, however, he should be opposed even before he has committed an act of hostility. (As soon as he gets into the clutches of society the first operation to be performed upon him should be that of castration.) A criminal's bad manners and his low degree of intelligence should not be reckoned against him. Nothing is more common than that he should misunderstand himself (more particularly when his rebellious instinct—the rancour of the unclassed—has not reached consciousness simply because he has not read enough).It is natural that he should deny and dishonour his deed while under the influence of fear at its failure.All this is quite distinct from those cases in which, psychologically speaking, the criminal yields to an incomprehensible impulse, and attributes a motive to his deed by associating it with a merely incidental and insignificant action (for example, robbing a man, when his real desire was to take his blood).

The worth of a man should not be measured by any one isolated act.Napoleon warned us against this.Deeds which are only skin-deep are more particularly insignificant.If we have no crime—let us say no murder—on our conscience; why is it?It simply means that a few favourable circumstances have been wanting in our lives.And supposing we were induced to commit such a crime would our worth be materially affected? As a matter of fact, we should only be despised, if we were not credited with possessing the power to kill a man under certain circumstances. In nearly every crime certain qualities come into play without which no one would be a true man. Dostoievsky was not far wrong when he said of the inmates of the penal colonies in Siberia, that they constituted the strongest and most valuable portion of the Russian people. The fact that in our society the criminal happens to be a badly nourished and stunted animal is simply a condemnation of our system. In the days of the Renaissance the criminal was a flourishing specimen of humanity, and acquired his own virtue for himself,—Virtue in the sense of the Renaissance—that is to say, virtù; free from moralic acid.

It is only those whom we do not despise that we are able to elevate.Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime.

741.

Shame was first introduced into punishment when certain penalties were inflicted on persons held in contempt, such as slaves.It was a despised class that was most frequently punished, and thus it came to pass that punishment and contempt were associated.

742.

In the ancient idea of punishment a religious concept was immanent, namely, the retributive power of chastisement. Penalties purified; in modern society, however, penalties degrade. Punishment is a form of paying off a debt: once it has been paid, one is freed from the deed for which one was so ready to suffer. Provided belief in the power of punishment exist, once the penalty is paid a feeling of relief and lightheartedness results, which is not so very far removed from a state of convalescence and health. One has made one's peace with society, and one appears to one's self more dignified pure.... To-day, however, punishment isolates even more than the crime; the fate behind the sin has become so formidable that it is almost hopeless. One rises from punishment still an enemy of society. Henceforward it reckons yet another enemy against it. The jus talionis may spring from the spirit of retribution (that is to say, from a sort of modification of the instinct of revenge); but in the Book of Manu, for instance, it is the need of having some equivalent in order to do penance, or to become free in a religious sense.

743.

My pretty radical note of interrogation in the case of all more modern laws of punishment is this: should not the punishment fit the crime?—for in your heart of hearts thus would you have it.But then the susceptibility of the particular criminal to pain would have to be taken into account.In other words, there should be no such thing as a preconceived penalty for any crime—no fixed penal code.But as it would be no easy matter to ascertain the degree of sensitiveness of each individual criminal, punishment would have to be abolished in practice? What a sacrifice! Is it not? Consequently ...

744.

Ah!and the philosophy of jurisprudence!That is a science which, like all moral sciences, has not even been wrapped in swaddling-clothes yet.Even among jurists who consider themselves liberal, the oldest and most valuable significance of punishment is still misunderstood—it is not even known.So long as jurisprudence does not build upon a new foundation—on history and comparative anthropology—it will never cease to quarrel over the fundamentally false abstractions which are fondly imagined to be the "philosophy of law," and which have nothing whatever to do with modern man.The man of to-day, however, is such a complicated woof even in regard to his legal valuation that he allows of the most varied interpretation.

745.

An old Chinese sage once said he had heard that when mighty empires were doomed they began to have numberless laws.

746.

Schopenhauer would have all rapscallions castrated, and all geese shut up in convents.But from what point of view would this be desirable? The rascal has at least this advantage over other men—that he is not mediocre; and the fool is superior to us inasmuch as he does not suffer at the sight of mediocrity. It would be better to widen the gulf—that is to say, roguery and stupidity should be increased. In this way human nature would become broader ... but, after all, this is Fate, and it will happen, whether we desire it or not. Idiocy and roguery are increasing: this is part of modern progress.

747.

Society, to-day, is full of consideration, tact, and reticence, and of good-natured respect for other people's rights—even for the exactions of strangers.To an even greater degree is there a certain charitable and instinctive depreciation of the worth of man as shown by all manner of trustful habits.Respect for men, and not only for the most virtuous, is perhaps the real parting of the ways between us and the Christian mythologists also have our good share of irony even when listening to moral sermons.He who preaches morality to us debases himself in our eyes and becomes almost comical.Liberal-mindedness regarding morality is one of the best signs of our age.In cases where it is most distinctly wanting, we regard it as a sign of a morbid condition (the case of Carlyle in England, of Ibsen in Norway, and Schopenhauer's pessimism throughout Europe).If there is anything which can reconcile us to our own age, it is precisely the amount of immorality which it allows itself without falling in its own estimation—very much the reverse! In what, then, does the superiority of culture over the want of culture consist—of the Renaissance, for instance, over the Middle Ages? In this alone: the greater quantity of acknowledged immorality. From this it necessarily follows that the very zenith of human development must be regarded by the moral fanatic as the non plus ultra of corruption (in this connection let us recall Savonarola's judgment of Florence, Plato's indictment of Athens under Pericles, Luther's condemnation of Rome, Rousseau's anathemas against the society of Voltaire, and Germany's hostility to Goethe).

A little more fresh air, for Heaven's sake! This ridiculous condition of Europe must not last any longer. Is there a single idea behind this bovine nationalism? What possible value can there be in encouraging this arrogant self-conceit when everything to-day points to greater and more common interests? —at a moment when the spiritual dependence and denationalisation, which are obvious to all, are paving the way for the reciprocal rapprochements and fertilisations which make up the real value and sense of present-day culture! ... And it is precisely now that "the new German Empire" has been founded upon the most thread-bare and discredited of ideas—universal suffrage and equal right for all.

Think of all this struggling for advantage among conditions which are in every way degenerate: of this culture of big cities, of newspapers, of hurry and scurry, and of "aimlessness"! The economic unity of Europe must necessarily come—and with it, as a reaction, the pacivist movement.

A pacivist party, free from all sentimentality, which forbids its children to wage war; which forbids recourse to courts of justice; which forswears all fighting, all contradiction, and all persecution: for a while the party of the oppressed, and later the powerful party:—this party would be opposed to everything in the shape of revenge and resentment.

There will also be a war party, exercising the same thoroughness and severity towards itself, which will proceed in precisely the opposite direction.

749.

The princes of Europe should really consider whether as a matter of fact they can dispense with our services—with us, the immoralists.We are to-day the only power which can win a victory without allies: and we are therefore far and away the strongest of the strong.We can even do without lying, and let me ask what other power can dispense with this weapon?A strong temptation fights for us; the strongest, perhaps, that exists—the temptation of truth....Truth?How do I come by this word?I must withdraw it: I must repudiate this proud word.But no.We do not even want it—we shall be quite able to achieve our victory of power without its help.The real charm which fights for us, the eye of Venus which our opponents themselves deaden and blind—this charm is the magic of the extreme. The fascination which everything extreme exercises: we immoralists—we are in every way the extremists.

750.

The corrupted ruling classes have brought ruling into evil odour.The State administration of justice is a piece of cowardice, because the great man who can serve as a standard is lacking.At last the feeling of insecurity becomes so great that men fall in the dust before any sort of will-power that commands.

751.

"The will to power" is so loathed in democratic ages that the whole of the psychology of these ages seems directed towards its belittlement and slander. The types of men who sought the highest honours are said to have been Napoleon! Cæsar! and Alexander! —as if these had not been precisely the greatest scorners of honour.

And Helvetius would fain show us that we strive after power in order to have those pleasures which are at the disposal of the mighty—that is to say, according to him, this striving after power is the will to pleasure—hedonism!

752.

According as to whether a people feels: "the rights, the keenness of vision, and the gifts of leading, etc., are with the few" or "with the many"—it constitutes En oligarchic or a democratic community.

Monarchy represents the belief in a man who is completely superior a leader, a saviour, a demigod.

Aristocracy represents the belief in a chosen few—in a higher caste.

Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody else's equal, "At bottom we are all herd and mob."

753.

I am opposed to Socialism because it dreams ingenuously of goodness, truth, beauty, and equal rights (anarchy pursues the same ideal, but in a more brutal fashion).

I am opposed to parliamentary government and the power of the press, because they are the means whereby cattle become masters.

754.

The arming of the people means in the end the arming of the mob.

755.

Socialists are particularly ridiculous in my eyes, because of their absurd optimism concerning the "good man" who is supposed to be waiting in their cupboard, and who will come into being when the present order of society has been overturned and has made way for natural instincts.But the opposing party is quite as ludicrous, because it will not see the act of violence which lies beneath every law, the severity and egoism inherent in every kind of authority. "I and my kind will rule and prevail. Whoever degenerates will be either expelled or annihilated." —This was the fundamental feeling of all ancient legislation. The idea of a higher order of man is hated much more profoundly than monarchs themselves. Hatred of aristocracy always uses hatred of monarchy as a mask.

756.

How treacherous are all parties!They bring to light something concerning their leaders which the latter, perhaps, have hitherto kept hidden beneath a bushel with consummate art.

757.

Modern Socialism would fain create a profane counterpart to jesuitism: everybody a perfect instrument.But as to the object of it all, the purpose of it—this has not yet been ascertained.

758.

The slavery of to-day: a piece of barbarism.Where are the masters for whom these slaves work?One must not always expect the simultaneous appearance of the two complementary castes of society.

Utility and pleasure are slave theories of life.

"The blessing of work" is an ennobling phrase for slaves.Incapacity for leisure.

759.

There is no such thing as a right to live, a right to work, or a right to be happy: in this respect man is not different from the meanest worm.

760.

We must undoubtedly think of these things as uncompromisingly as Nature does: they preserve the species.

761.

We should look upon the needs of the masses with ironic compassion: they want something which we have got—Ah!

762.

European democracy is only in a very slight degree the manifestation of unfettered powers. It represents, above all, the unfettering of laziness, fatigue, and weakness

753.

Concerning the future of the workman—Workmen men should learn to regard their duties as soldiers do. They receive emoluments, incomes, but they do not get wages!

There is no relationship between work done and money received; the individual should, according to his kind, be so placed as to perform the highest that is compatible with his powers.

764.

Noblemen ought one day to live as the bourgeois do now—but above them, distinguishing themselves by the simplicity of their wants—the superior caste will then live in a poorer and simpler way and yet be in possession of power.

For lower orders of mankind the reverse valuations hold good: it is a matter of implanting "virtues" in them.Absolute commands, terrible compulsory methods, in order that they may rise above mere ease in life.The remainder may obey, but their vanity demands that they may feel themselves dependent, not upon great men, but upon principles.

765.

"The Atonement of all Sin?"

People speak of the profound injustice of the social arrangement, as it the fact that one man is born in favourable circumstances and that another is born in unfavourable ones—or that one should possess gifts the other has not, were on the face of it an injustice.Among the more honest of these opponents of society this is what is said: "We, with all the bad, morbid, criminal qualities which we acknowledge we possess, are only the inevitable result of the oppression for ages of the weak by the strong"; thus they insinuate their evil natures into the consciences of the ruling classes. They threaten and storm and curse. They become virtuous from sheer indignation—they don't want to have become bad men and canaille for nothing. The name for this attitude, which is an invention of the last century, is, if I am not mistaken, pessimism; and even that pessimism which is the outcome of indignation. It is in this attitude of mind that history is judged, that it is deprived of its inevitable fatality, and that responsibility and even guilt is discovered in it. For the great desideratum is to find guilty people in it. The botched and the bungled, the decadents of all kinds, are revolted at themselves, and require sacrifices in order that they may not slake their thirst for destruction upon themselves (which might, indeed, be the most reasonable procedure). But for this purpose they at least require a semblance of justification, i.e. a theory according to which the fact of their existence, and of their character, may be expiated by a scapegoat. This scapegoat may be God,—in Russia such resentful atheists are not wanting,—or the order of society, or education and upbringing, or the Jews, or the nobles, or, finally, the well-constituted of every kind. "It is a sin for a man to have been born in decent circumstances, for by so doing he disinherits the others, he pushes them aside, he imposes upon them the curse of vice and of work.... How can I be made answerable for my misery; surely some one must be responsible for it, or I could not bear to live." ...

In short, resentful pessimism discovers responsible parties in order to create a pleasurable sensation for itself—revenge...."Sweeter than honey"—thus does even old Homer speak of revenge.

***

The fact that such a theory no longer meets with understanding—or rather, let us say, contempt is accounted for by that particle of Christianity which still circulates in the blood of every one of us; it makes us tolerant towards things simply because we scent a Christian savour about them....The Socialists appeal to the Christian instincts; this is their really refined piece of cleverness....Thanks to Christianity, we have now grown accustomed to the superstitious concept of a soul—of an immortal soul, of soul monads, which, as a matter of fact, hails from somewhere else, and which has only become inherent in certain cases—that is to say, become incarnate in them—by accident: but the nature of these cases is not altered, let alone determined by it.The circumstances of society, of relationship, and of history are only accidents for the soul, perhaps misadventures: in any case, the world is not their work.By means of the idea of soul the individual is made transcendental; thanks to it, a ridiculous amount of importance can be attributed to him.

As a matter of fact, it was Christianity which first induced the individual to take up this position of judge of all things.It made megalomania almost his duty: it has made everything temporary and limited subordinate to eternal rights!What is the State, what is society, what are historical laws, what is physiology to me? Thus speaks something from beyond Becoming, an immutable entity throughout history: thus speaks something immortal, something divine—it is the soul!

Another Christian, but no less insane, concept has percolated even deeper into the tissues of modern ideas: the concept of the equality of all souls before God. In this concept the prototype of all theories concerning equal rights is to be found. Man was first taught to stammer this proposition religiously: later, it was converted into a moral; no wonder he has ultimately begun to take it seriously, to take it practically!—that is to say, politically, socialistically, resento-pessimistically.

Wherever responsible circumstances or people have been looked for, it was the instinct of revenge that sought them. This instinct of revenge obtained such an ascendancy over man in the course of centuries that the whole of metaphysics, psychology, ideas of society, and, above all, morality, are tainted with it. Man has nourished this idea of responsibility to such an extent that he has introduced the bacillus of vengeance into everything. By means of it he has made God Himself ill, and killed innocence in the universe, by tracing every condition of things to acts of will, to intentions, to responsible agents. The whole teaching of will, this most fatal fraud that has ever existed in psychology hitherto, was invented essentially for the purpose of punishment. It was the social utility of punishment that lent this concept its dignity, its power, and its truth. The originator of that psychology, that we shall call volitional psychology, must be sought in those classes which had the right of punishment in their hands; above all, therefore, among the priests who stood on the very pinnacle of ancient social systems: these people wanted to create for themselves the right to wreak revenge—they wanted to supply God with the privilege of vengeance. For this purpose; man was declared "free": to this end every action had to be regarded as voluntary, and the origin of every deed had to be considered as lying in consciousness. But by such propositions as these ancient psychology is refuted.

To-day, when Europe seems to have taken the contrary direction; when we halcyonians would fain withdraw, dissipate, and banish the concept of guilt and punishment with all our might from the world; when our most serious endeavours are concentrated upon purifying psychology, morality, history, nature, social institutions and privileges, and even God Himself, from this filth; in whom must we recognise our most mortal enemies? Precisely in those apostles of revenge and resentment, in those who are par excellence pessimists from indignation, who make it their mission to sanctify their filth with the name of "righteous indignation." ... We others, whose one desire is to reclaim innocence on behalf of Becoming, would fain be the missionaries of a purer thought, namely, that no one is responsible for man's qualities; neither God, nor society, nor his parents, nor his ancestors, nor himself—in fact, that no one is to blame for him ... The being who might be made responsible for a man's existence, for the fact that he is constituted in a particular way, or for his birth in certain circumstances and in a certain environment, is absolutely lacking. —And it is a great blessing that such a being is non-existent .... We are not the result of an eternal design, of a will, of a desire: there is no attempt being made with us to attain to an "ideal of perfection," to an "ideal of happiness," to an "ideal of virtue,"—and we are just as little the result of a mistake on God's part in the presence of which He ought to feel uneasy (a thought which is known to be at the very root of the Old Testament). There is not a place nor a purpose nor a sense to which we can attribute our existence or our kind of existence. In the first place, no one is in a position to do this: it is quite impossible to judge, to measure, or to compare, or even to deny the whole universe! And why? —For five reasons, all accessible to the man of average intelligence: for instance, because there is no existence outside the universe ... and let us say it again, this is a great blessing, for therein lies the whole innocence of our lives.

---

2.The Individual.

766.

Fundamental errors: to regard the herd as an aim instead of the individual! The herd is only a means and nothing more!But nowadays people are trying to understand the herd as they would an individual, and to confer higher rights upon it than upon isolated personalities. Terrible mistake!! In addition to this, all that makes for gregariousness, e.g. sympathy, is regarded as the more valuable side of our natures.

767.

The individual is something quite new, and capable of creating new things. He is something absolute, and all his actions are quite his own. The individual in the end has to seek the valuation for his actions in himself: because he has to give an individual meaning even to traditional words and notions. His interpretation of a formula is at least personal, even if he does not create the formula itself: at least as an interpreter he is creative.

768.

The "ego" oppresses and kills.It acts like an organic cell.It is predatory and violent.It would fain regenerate itself—pregnancy.It would fain give birth to its God and see all mankind at its feet.

769.

Every living organism gropes around as far as its power permits, and overcomes all that is weaker than itself: by this means it finds pleasure in its own existence. The increasing "humanity" of this tendency consists in the fact that we are beginning to feel ever more subtly how difficult it is really to absorb others: while we could show our power by injuring him, his will estranges him from us, and thus makes him less susceptible of being overcome.

770.

The degree of resistance which has to be continually overcome in order to remain at the top, is the measure of freedom, whether for individuals or for societies: freedom being understood as positive power, as will to power. The highest form of individual freedom, of sovereignty, would, according to this, in all probability be found not five feet away from its opposite—that is to say, where the danger of slavery hangs over life, like a hundred swords of Damocles. Let any one go through the whole of history from this point of view: the ages when the individual reaches perfect maturity, i.e. the free ages, when the classical type, sovereign man, is attained to—these were certainly not humane times!

There should be no choice: either one must be uppermost or nethermost—like a worm, despised, annihilated, trodden upon. One must have tyrants against one in order to become a tyrant, i.e. in order to be free. It is no small advantage to have a hundred swords of Damocles suspended over one: it is only thus that one learns to dance, it is only thus that one attains to any freedom in one's movements.

771.

Man more than any other animal was originally altruistic—hence his slow growth (child) and lofty development. Hence, too, his extraordinary and latest kind of egoism. —Beasts of prey are much more individualistic.

772.

A criticism of selfishness. The involuntary ingenuousness of La Rochefoucauld, who believed that he was saying something bold, liberal, and paradoxical (in his days, of course, truth in psychological matters was something that astonished people) when he said. "Les grandes âmes ne sont pas celles qui ont moins de passions et plus de vertus que les âmes communes, mais seulement celles qui ont de plus grands desseins." Certainly, John Stuart Mill (who calls Chamfort the noble and philosophical La Rochefoucauld of the eighteenth century) recognises in him merely an astute and keen-sighted observer of all that which is the result of habitual selfishness in the human breast, and he adds: "A noble spirit is unable to see the necessity of a constant observation of baseness and contemptibility, unless it were to show against what corrupting influences a lofty spirit and a noble character were able to triumph."

773.

The Morphology of the Feelings of Self.

First standpoint—To what extent are sympathy or communal feelings, the lower or preparatory states, at a time when personal self-esteem and initiative in valuation, on the part of individuals, are not yet possible?

Second standpoint.—To what extent is the zenith of collective self-esteem, the pride in the distinction of the clan, the feeling of inequality and a certain abhorrence of mediation, of equal rights and of reconciliation, the school for individual self-esteem?It may be this in so far as it compels the individual to represent the pride of the community —he is obliged to speak and act with tremendous self-respect, because he stands for the community And the same holds good when the individual regards himself as the instrument or speaking-tube of a godhead.

Third standpoint.—To what extent do these forms of impersonality invest the individual with enormous importance?In so far as higher powers are using him as an intermediary: religious shyness towards one's self is the condition of prophets and poets.

Fourth standpoint.—To what extent does responsibility for a whole educate the individual in foresight, and give him a severe and terrible hand, a calculating and cold heart, majesty of bearing and of action—things which he would not allow himself if he stood only for his own rights?

In short, collective self-esteem is the great preparatory school for personal sovereignty.The noble caste is that which creates the heritage of this faculty.

774.

The disguised forms of will to power:—

(1) The desire for freedom, for independence for equilibrium, for peace, for co-ordination. Also that of the anchorite, the "Free-Spirit." In its lowest form, the will to live at all costs—the instinct of self-preservation.

(2) Subordination, with the view of satisfying the will to power of a whole community; submissiveness, the making of one's self indispensable and useful to him who has the power; love, a secret path to the heart of the powerful, in order to become his master.

(3) The feeling of duty, conscience, the imaginary comfort of belonging to a higher order than those who actually hold the reins of power; the acknowledgment of an order of rank which allows of judging even the more powerful, self-depreciation; the discovery of new codes of morality (of which the Jews are a classical example).

775.

Praise and gratitude as forms of will to power.—Praise and gratitude for harvests, for good weather, victories, marriages, and peace—all festivals need a subject on which feeling can be outpoured. The desire is to make all good things that happen to one appear as though they had been done to one: people will have a donor. The same holds good of the work of art: people are not satisfied with it alone, they must praise the artist. —What, then, is praise? It is a sort of compensation for benefits received, a sort of giving back, a manifestation of our power—for the man who praises assents to, blesses, values, judgeshe arrogates to himself the right to give his consent to a thing, to be able to confer honours. An increased feeling of happiness or of liveliness is also an increased feeling of power, and it is as a result of this feeling that a man praises (it is as the outcome of this feeling that he invents a donor, a "subject"). Gratitude is thus revenge of a lofty kind: it is most severely exercised and demanded where equality and pride both require to be upheld—that is to say, where revenge is practised to its fullest extent.

776.

Concerning the Machiavellism of Power.

The will to power appears:—

(a) Among the oppressed and slaves of all kinds, in the form of will to "freedom": the mere fact of breaking loose from something seems to be an end in itself (in a religio-moral sense: "One is only answerable to one's own conscience"; "evangelical freedom," etc. etc.),

(b) In the case of a stronger species, ascending to power, in the form of the will to overpower. If this fails, then it shrinks to the "will to justice"—that is to say, to the will to the same measure of rights as the ruling caste possesses.

(c) In the case of the strongest, richest, most independent, and most courageous, in the form of "love of humanity," of "love of the people," of the "gospel," of "truth" of "God," of "pity," of self sacrifice," etc. etc.; in the form of overpowering, of deeds of capture, of imposing service on some one, of an instinctive reckoning of one's self as part of a great mass of power to which one attempts to give a direction: the hero, the prophet, the Cæsar, the Saviour, the bell-wether. (The love of the sexes also belongs to this category, it will overpower something, possess it utterly, and it looks like self-abnegation. At bottom it is only the love of one's instrument, of one's "horse"—the conviction that things belong to one because one is in a position to use them.)

"Freedom," "Justice," "Love"!!!

777.

Love.—Behold this love and pity of women—what could be more egoistic? ...And when they do sacrifice themselves and their honour or reputation, to whom do they sacrifice themselves?To the man?Is it not rather to an unbridled desire?These desires are quite as selfish, even though they may be beneficial to others and provoke gratitude. ...To what extent can such a hyperfœtation of one valuation sanctify everything else!!

778.

"Senses," "Passions."—When the fear of the senses and of the passions and of the desires becomes so great as to warn us against them, it is already a symptom of weakness: extreme measures always characterise abnormal conditions. That which is lacking here, or more precisely that which is decaying, is the power to resist an impulse: when one feels instinctively that one must yield,—that is to say, that one must react,—then it is an excellent thing to avoid opportunities (temptations).

The stimulation of the senses is only a temptation in so far as those creatures are concerned whose systems are easily swayed and influenced: on the other hand, in the case of remarkable constitutional obtuseness and hardness, strong stimuli are necessary in order to set the functions in motion.Dissipation can only be objected to in the case of one who has no right to it; and almost all passions have fallen into disrepute thanks to those who were not strong enough to convert them to their own advantage.

One should understand that passions are open to the same objections as illnesses: yet we should not be justified in doing without illnesses, and still less without passions.We require the abnormal; we give life a tremendous shock by means of these great illnesses.

In detail the following should be distinguished:—

(1) The dominating passion, which may even bring the supremest form of health with it: in this case the co-ordination of the internal system and its functions to perform one task is best attained,—but this is almost a definition of health.

(2) The antagonism of the passions the double, treble, and multiple soul in one breast:[6] this is very unhealthy; it is a sign of inner ruin and of disintegration, betraying and promoting an internal dualism and anarchy—unless, of course, one passion becomes master. Return to health.

(3) The juxtaposition of passions without their being either opposed or united with one another.Very often transitory, and then, as soon as order is established, this condition may be a healthy one.A most interesting class of men belong to this order, the chameleons; they are not necessarily at loggerheads with themselves, they are both happy and secure, but they cannot develop—their moods lie side by side, even though they may seem to lie far apart.They change, but they become nothing.