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

by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Vicious and unbridled people: their depressing influence upon the value of the pussions. It was the appalling barbarity of morality which was principally responsible in the Middle Ages for the compulsory recourse to a veritable "league of virtue"—and this was coupled with an equally appalling exaggeration of all that which constitutes the value of man. Militant "civilisation" (taming) is in need of all kinds of irons and tortures in order to maintain itself against terrible and beast-of-prey natures.

In this case, contusion, although it may have the most nefarious influences, is quite natural: that which men of power and will are able to demand of themselves gives them the standard for what they may also allow themselves. Such natures are the very opposite of the vicious and the unbridled; although under certain circumstances they may perpetrate deeds for which an inferior man would be convicted of vice and intemperance.

In this respect the concept, "all men are equal before God" does an extraordinary amount of harm; actions and attitudes of mind were forbidden which belonged to the prerogative of the strong alone, just as if they were in themselves unworthy of man. All the tendencies of strong men were brought into disrepute by the fact that the defensive weapons of the most weak (even of those who were weakest towards themselves) were established as a standard of valuation.

The confusion went so far that precisely the great virtuosos of life (whose self-control presents the sharpest contrast to the vicious and the unbridled) were branded with the most opprobrious names. Even to this day people feel themselves compelled to disparage a Cæsar Borgia: it is simply ludicrous. The Church has anathematised German Kaisers owing to their vices: as if a monk or a priest had the right to say a word as to what a Frederick II. should allow himself. Don Juan is sent to hell: this is very naïf. Has anybody ever noticed that all interesting men are lacking in heaven? ... This is only a hint to the girls, as to where they may best find salvation. If one think at all logically, and also have a profound insight into that which makes a great man, there, can be no doubt at all that the Church has dispatched all "great men" to Hades—its fight is against all "greatness in man."

872.

The rights which a man arrogates to himself are relative to the duties which he sets himself, and to the tasks which he feels capable of performing. The great majority of men have no right to life, and are only a misfortune to their higher fellows.

873.

The misunderstanding of egoism: on the part of ignoble natures who know nothing of the lust of conquest and the insatiability of great love, and who likewise know nothing of the overflowing feelings of power which make a man wish to overcome things, to force them over to himself, and to lay them on his heart, the power which impels an artist to his material. It often happens also that the active spirit looks for a field for its activity. In ordinary "egoism" it is precisely the ... "non-ego," the profoundly mediocre creature, the member of the herd, who wishes to maintain himself—and when this is perceived by the rarer, more subtle, and less mediocre natures, it revolts them. For the judgment of the latter is this: "We are the noble! It is much more important to maintain us than that cattle!"

874.

The degeneration of the ruler and of the ruling classes has been the cause of all the great disorders in history! Without the Roman Cæsars and Roman society, Christianity would never have prevailed.