The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II

by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Suppose the strong were masters in all respects, even in valuing: let us try and think what their attitude would be towards illness, suffering, and sacrifice! Self-contempt on the part of the weak would be the result: they would do their utmost to disappear and to extirpate their kind. And would this be desirable?—should we really like a world in which the subtlety, the consideration, the intellectuality, the plasticity—in fact, the whole influence of the weak—was lacking?[9] ...

We have seen two "wills to power" at war (in this special case we had a principle: that of agreeing with the one that has hitherto succumbed, and of disagreeing with the one that has hitherto triumphed): we have recognised the "real world" as a "world of lies" and morality as a form of immorality. We do not say "the stronger is wrong."

We have understood what it is that has determined the highest values hitherto, and why the latter should have prevailed over the opposite value: it was numerically the stronger.

If we now purify the opposite value of the infection, the half-heartedness, and the degeneration, with which we identify it, we restore Nature to the throne, free from moralic acid.

[9] TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.—We realise here the great difference between Nietzsche and those who draw premature conclusions from Darwinism. There is no brutal solution of modern problems in Nietzsche's philosophy. He did not advocate anything so ridiculous as the total suppression of the weak and the degenerate. What he wished to resist and to overthrow was their supremacy, their excessive power. He felt that there was a desirable and stronger type which was in need of having its hopes, aspirations, and instincts upheld in defiance of Christian values.

402.

Morality, a useful error; or, more clearly still, a necessary and expedient lie according to the greatest and most impartial of its supporters.

403.

One ought to be able to acknowledge the truth up to that point where one is sufficiently elevated no longer to require the disciplinary school of moral error.—When one judges life morally, it disgusts one.

Neither should false personalities be invented; one should not say, for instance, "Nature is cruel." It is precisely when one perceives that there is no such central controlling and responsible force that one is relieved!