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.