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

by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

And finally, woman! One-half of mankind is weak, chronically sick, changeable, shifty woman requires strength in order to cleave to it; she also requires a religion of the weak which glorifies weakness, love, and modesty as divine: or, better still, she makes the strong weak—she rules when she succeeds in overcoming the strong. Woman has always conspired with decadent types,—the priests, for instance, against the mighty, against the "strong," against men. Women avail themselves of children for the cult of piety, pity, and love:—the mother stands as the symbol of convincing altruism.

Finally, the increase of civilisation with its necessary correlatives, the increase of morbid elements, of the neurotic and psychiatric and of the criminal. A sort of intermediary species arises, the artist. He is distinct from those who are criminals as the result of weak wills and of the fear of society, although they may not yet be ripe for the asylum; but he has antennas which grope inquisitively into both spheres, this specific plant of culture, the modern artist, painter, musician, and, above all, novelist, who designates his particular kind of attitude with the very indefinite word "naturalism."... Lunatics, criminals, and realists[1] are on the increase: this is the sign of a growing culture plunging forward at headlong speed—that is to say, its excrement, its refuse, the rubbish that is shot from it every day, is beginning to acquire more importance, the retrogressive movement keeps pace with the advance.

Finally, the social mishmash, which is the result of revolution, of the establishment of equal rights, and of the superstition, the "equality of men." Thus the possessors of the instincts of decline (of resentment, of discontent, of the lust of destruction, of anarchy and Nihilism), as also the instincts of slavery, of cowardice, of craftiness, and of rascality, which are inherent among those classes of society which have long been suppressed, are beginning to get infused into the blood of all ranks. Two or three generations later, the race can no longer be recognised—everything has become mob. And thus there results a collective instinct against selection, against every kind of privilege, and this instinct operates with such power, certainty, hardness, and cruelty that, as a matter of fact, in the end, even the privileged classes have to submit: all those who still wish to hold on to power flatter the mob, work with the mob, and must have the mob on their side—the "geniuses" above all. The latter become the heralds of those feelings with which the mob can be inspired,—the expression of pity, of honour, even for all that suffers, all that is low and despised, and has lived under persecution, becomes predominant (types: Victor Hugo, Richard Wagner).—The rise of the mob signifies once more the rise of old values.

In the case of such an extreme movement, both in tempo and in means, as characterises our civilisation, man's ballast is shifted. Those men whose worth is greatest, and whose mission, as it were, is to compensate for the very great danger of such a morbid movement,—such men become dawdlers par excellence; they are slow to accept anything, and are tenacious; they are creatures that are relatively lasting in the midst of this vast mingling and changing of elements. In such circumstances power is necessarily relegated to the mediocre: mediocrity, as the trustee and bearer of the future, consolidates itself against the rule of the mob and of eccentricities (both of which are, in most cases, united). In this way a new antagonist is evolved for exceptional men—or in certain cases a new temptation. Provided that they do not adapt themselves to the mob, and stand up for what satisfies the instincts of the disinherited, they will find it necessary to be "mediocre" and sound. They know: mediocritas is also aurea,—it alone has command of money and gold (of all that glitters ...).... And, once more, old virtue and the whole superannuated world of ideals in general secures a gifted host of special-pleaders.... Result: mediocrity acquires intellect, wit, and genius, it becomes entertaining, and even seductive.

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Result.—A high culture can only stand upon a broad basis, upon a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. In its service and assisted by it, science and even art do their work. Science could not wish for a better state of affairs: in its essence it belongs to a middle-class type of man,—among exceptions it is out of place,—there is not anything aristocratic and still less anything anarchic in its instincts.—The power of the middle classes is then upheld by means of commerce, but, above all, by means of money-dealing: the instinct of great financiers is opposed to everything extreme—on this account the Jews are, for the present, the most conservative power in the threatening and insecure conditions of modern Europe. They can have no use either for revolutions, for socialism, or for militarism: if they would have power, and if they should need it, even over the revolutionary party, this is only the result of what I have already said, and it in no way contradicts it. Against other extreme movements they may occasionally require to excite terror by showing how much power is in their hands. But their instinct itself is inveterately conservative and "mediocre, ... Wherever power exists, they know how to become mighty; but the application of their power always takes the same direction. The polite term for mediocre, as is well known, is the word "Liberal."

Reflection.—It is all nonsense to suppose that this general conquest of values is anti-biological. In order to explain it, we ought to try and show that it is the result of a certain interest of life to maintain the type "man," even by means of this method which leads to the prevalence of the weak and the physiologically botched—if things were otherwise, might man not cease to exist? Problem ...

The enhancement of the type may prove fatal to the maintenance of the species. Why?—The experience of history shows that strong races decimate each other mutually, by means of war, lust for power, and venturousness; the strong emotions; wastefulness (strength is no longer capitalised, disturbed mental systems arise from excessive tension); their existence is a costly affair in short, they persistently give rise to friction between themselves; periods of profound slackness and torpidity intervene: all great ages have to be paid for.... The strong are, after all, weaker, less wilful, and more absurd than the average weak ones.

They are squandering races. "Permanence," in itself, can have no value: that which ought to be preferred thereto would be a shorter life for the species, but a life richer in creations. It would remain to be proved that, even as things are, a richer sum of creations is attained than in the case of the shorter existence; i.e. that man, as a storehouse of power, attains to a much higher degree of dominion over things under the conditions which have existed hitherto.... We are here face to face with a problem of economics.

[1] The German word is "Naturalist," and really means "realist" in a bad sense.—Tr.