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....