What I warn people against: confounding the instincts of decadence with those of humanity;
Confounding the dissolving means of civilisation and those which necessarily promote decadence, with culture;
Confounding debauchery, and the principle, "laisser aller," with the Will to Power (the latter is the exact reverse of the former).
123.
The unsolved problems which I set anew: the problem of civilisation, the struggle between Rousseau and Voltaire about the year 1760. Man becomes deeper, more mistrustful, more "immoral," stronger, more self-confident—and therefore "more natural"; that is "progress." In this way, by a process of division of labour, the more evil strata and the milder and tamer strata of society get separated: so that the general facts are not visible at first sight.... It is a sign of strength, and of the self-control and fascination of the strong, that these stronger strata possess the arts in order to make their greater powers for evil felt as something "higher" As soon as there is "progress" there is a transvaluation of the strengthened factors into the "good."
124.
Man must have the courage of his natural instincts restored to him.—
The poor opinion he has of himself must be destroyed (not in the sense of the individual, but in the sense of the natural man ...)—
The contradictions in things must be eradicated, after it has been well understood that we were responsible for them—